House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

  “Yeah, Hardwicke talks about keeping a watch out. But if he was here, he’d figure out a way to put a torch to that barn. Knowing him, he’d set fire to the old man’s house too. Maybe kill some Indians, get ’em on the run. You all know that’s what he’d be doing.”

  Colonel Mingo slipped back to his campsite, his heart pounding with every step. He carried with him a terrible secret. Mingo knew who set the fire that burned New Hope. He also knew that if he shared the secret, many of his friends would die.

  He found Samuel pacing back and forth in the shadows, watching.

  “Samuel,” he said, “these men were sent by Marshal Hardwicke. I don’t think they want any trouble, but one of ’em is talking about setting a fire to the barn, so we have to keep an eye on ’em.”

  “I can stay awake and let you know if they cause any trouble.”

  “That’s a good idea, Samuel. I’ll stay with the children and you keep an eye on Hardwicke’s men. We don’t want any bloodshed.”

  “I understand,” said Samuel. “I’ll report to you every few hours till morning.”

  “Be careful,” Mingo said. Samuel nodded and disappeared into the shadows.

  Goode Kitchen and Strong Women

  Rose

  Twenty women—wives and kinfolks to the men in the living room— crowded around the kitchen table. While Pokoni and I washed dishes and served the men, they kept us going. They cut corn from the cob, chopped chicken for pashofa, and refilled coffee water boiling on the stove. Their talk circled the affair at the train station, viewing it in a corner-of-the-eye way of talking. Though armed with butcher knives and long-handled spoons, their real weapons were words, and they knew how to use them.

  “There’s no telling what Uncle Lester would have done if he was still alive. Mercy, did he have a temper.”

  “I believe the marshal’s wife would be shopping for a black dress, Lester have anything to do with it.”

  “He was not afraid of nothing or nobody.”

  “Uh-huh. He remind me of that Wilson boy, what was his name? ’Member, the one went in the army. Took after a officer with a pickaxe. Man made him work in the kitchen and he hit him with a pickaxe.”

  “Nothing good came of that.”

  “I ’spec he still in jail.”

  “Somewhere back east.”

  “Nord Caylina, I believe.”

  “How’s the water looking?”

  “Need refilling, look like to me.”

  “Gonna need another chicken ’fore long.”

  “With all the noise coming from in there, you’d think they wouldn’t have time to eat.”

  “They men. They gonna find time to eat.”

  “You know that’s true.”

  “Un-huh.”

  “They gonna get to the table.”

  “I believe that.”

  “Last time my man went to battle, it was over a drumstick.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Here come the soup pot. Look like somebody done licked the bottom of it.”

  “Must be my husband.”

  “Could be mine.”

  “Yessir. They men. They gonna find time to eat.”

  “You know that’s true.”

  With the children nestled around Colonel Mingo’s campfire, the men going at it in the front room, and the younger ladies helping Pokoni in the kitchen, the older women roosted comfortably on the back porch, bathed in the blue light of the waning moon.

  The sounds amongst these women were creaking sounds, the creaks of a rocking chair, the soft creaks of porch planks as tired bodies shifted and settled. Every gust of wind carried earthy smells, of hay and chickens, sometimes the perfume of gardenias.

  These older women seemed to float in a different world, a place of whispery music and faded colors. It was a place not between life and death, but rather above life and death, above it all. The calls to action and urgings from the living room, they had no place here. They were fires from a distant hillside. When these women spoke of the men in the house, they spoke of them as if they were children.

  “The marshal will pay. He will suffer—and his kind, they will all suffer,” a deep voice boomed from the living room.

  “That sounds like Bobby Harris, little Bobby Harris,” said Mrs. McVann, puckering her lips in soft laughter. “I still remember him begging me for a piece of blackberry pie. He saw it sitting on the kitchen table and went to almost crying, chubby little Bobby Harris.”

  “Wasn’t he a whiney boy?” said Mrs. Mangum.

  “He will suffer,” another man repeated.

  The word suffer unsettled the women. The lid of a memory box rattled open and threads of hymns came pouring out. The women started singing to themselves, till one single voice stood out. It was cracked and wavering. The other women fell silent and the eldest woman sang.

  Hatak yoshoba chia ma!

  Achukmut haponaklo;

  Chisus chi okchalinchi ut

  Auet chi hohoyoshke;

  Chisus okut

  Auet chi hohoyoshke.

  Hark the voice of love and mercy,

  Sounds aloud from Calvary.

  See it rends the rocks asunder

  Shakes the earth and veils the sky.

  “It is finished, it is finished,”

  Hear the dying Saviour cry.

  Somebody picked up a turtle shell rattle I’d left lying on the porch and started shaking it. The sound was so soft. Those little stones shifting around in the turtle’s home made everything around it glow in the color of holy. It was a yellow and blue color, like peeking through rainclouds at a tree-shaded lake shining in the sky.

  Holy, holy, holy.

  Seeing those old women sitting on the porch.

  Holy, holy, holy.

  Those old women made it so. Everything was holy. The creaking boards, the wind tilting the tops of the pine trees, the smell of gardenias, the cold silver stars, everything was holy.

  Around one o’clock in the morning, the conversation wound down to a light sprinkling. I could hear the loud clicking of our grandfather clock. It sat by the staircase wall of the living room and its quiet noise always filled the house after everyone went to bed.

  This was farming country and Saturday had been a working day like any other. Droopy eyes blinked and tired heads went to nodding. Snoring came from every corner.

  At one-thirty, Pokoni moved slowly to the living room and settled back in her usual chair facing the empty fireplace. She closed her eyes and when Amafo rose to heat milk for her cocoa, she merely tilted her head in his direction. In a few minutes the sweet smell of scalding milk drifted from the kitchen. Amafo appeared carrying grandmother’s cocoa cup, stirring the chocolate to life as he walked. She opened her eyes and accepted the steamy drink.

  Amafo moved to the center of the room and stood before the fireplace. The snoring ceased and slumping men sat up. The front door eased open and several men entered, heads down and tip-toeing. The kitchen emptied and women stood side-by-side with their husbands. The vigil, they knew, would soon be over.

  “I need your help,” my Amafo said, and a room full of anxious eyes turned his way. “You have every one of you been very nice to offer to help me and my family. I accept your offer.”

  “You say the word, we’re ready,” said Cousin Wilbur. Mister Pope scooted behind him, leaned over and placed one large hand on Wilbur’s shoulder, letting the young man know it was time to listen.

  “Marshal Hardwicke expects me to stay far away from town. And if I did, this would all be forgotten. But I will never forget this day and my grandchildren will never forget this day.”

  Amafo took his glasses off and held them up for all to see.

  “It is the day my glasses were broken. But maybe it will be a day of blessings after all. Maybe now the people of Spiro can see, as we have seen for years, the man who is their marshal.”

  Amafo was tiring now, fading rapidly. His face sagged and he sat down on the ledge of the fireplace. Pok
oni reached out and touched him on the knee, and a new breath of energy seemed to fill him. He lifted his head and gazed open-eyed around the room.

  “We must all agree to do this, all of us. I need your help,” he said. “Many of you work for Nahullos. They gonna try to talk to you about today. Don’t fall into that trap. They gonna ask about the marshal, what you think of the marshal, what he did to that old Choctaw man at the railroad.”

  Amafo stood up real slow and pulled the hat from his head like he was wiping his brow. The right side of his face, where the board struck him, was deep purple. Even from where I stood I could see broken blood vessels snaking off from the main wound. His eye was swelled shut. A line of dried blood as thick as a bacon slab ran down his cheek.

  I gasped and a hot breath of air flew from my chest. Murmurs floated around the room and several husbands and wives moved closer to touch and hold one another. Pokoni blinked several times and thrust her chin up, making sure she held her head high. I knew she was fighting back the tears.

  This was Amafo’s moment and tears would do him no good.

  “When they try to talk to you ’bout it, just walk away,” Amafo said. “If you got to say anything, tell ’em how tough you think the marshal is. Tell ’em how you’d never want to cross him. Tell ’em he is a big, strong man. Then walk away.

  “They will talk after you leave. They will tell stories about today. More people than the railroad platform could hold will claim to have seen it all. Everyone will talk about Marshal Hardwicke. And when the talk dies down, I will always be there, wearing my spiderweb glasses.

  “They will see a lot of me in town. I will cross the street to speak friendly words to the marshal. I will do this. Over and over I will do this, every day I will do this, speak friendly words to him and tip my hat to him, till one day he will turn away from me and they will see who is afraid. That is how we will win. Our enemies will be defeated by our goodness.”

  “Now, this day is over and the Lord’s Day is upon us,” he said, replacing his hat. “You are all welcome to stay. Goodnight and God bless you. Yakoke. You are my friends.”

  Amafo helped my grandmother from her chair and the two of them made a slow procession up the stairs. Lamps were blown out throughout the house, women brought blankets and pillows in from the wagons, and within ten minutes an entire household of Choctaws nuzzled in the warm clutches of sleep.

  Sunday Morning

  Rose

  The road to the church was the color of a roan horse, lined with tall pines, deep green and sweet to smell. It seemed every Sunday a breeze caught the tops of the pines just as we rounded the last curve in the road, just before the church appeared in the clearing up ahead. Those green pine trees bowed and waved to everybody passing below.

  “God’s welcome to His children,” Pokoni always said.

  Every Sunday morning two hundred Choctaws drove their wagons down that dirt road on their way to the First Christian Church of Skullyville. On the Sunday following my grandfather’s hurtful injury, it was twice that many at least. The church was nestled in a clearing surrounded by a tight cluster of pines, elms, oaks and sagging sycamores. The trees to the east of the church were trimmed back and the undergrowth cleared, owing to their closeness to the graveyard. To the south and west, smaller redbuds, flame-leafed sumacs, and thorny wild roses grew unchecked.

  After what happened at the train station, the Amafo I thought I knew would have stayed far away from people for at least a month. But this new Amafo, the Amafo born at the station and brought to life at our home last night, insisted that our family be the first to arrive. As we passed beneath the final clump of pines, Amafo took off his glasses, cleaned the lens, and squinted at the sky.

  “Take some getting used to,” said Pokoni. I expected Amafo to nod or speak in any of a hundred ways to agree, something like “Umm,” or “uh-huh,” something oldmanish.

  Amafo said nothing. He stared at the back of Pokoni’s neck till she reached behind herself and took his hand. Take some getting used to passed as everyday talk, but Pokoni was not talking about the broken glasses. She was talking about the broken world we were now slipping into.

  As we neared the church, I saw a recently formed grouping of families, old to our congregation, but new in their ways. The social order of the church had changed since the New Hope burning. We now had in our midst a family of people who had all lost children in the fire.

  This gathering grew every week, as grievers gave way to their grieving. They had settled on a roosting place, a comfortable spot in the shade of the elms near the graveyard. To an outsider, the grieving ones might look like a family of real kin, hovering around the graveyard for the anniversary of somebody’s death. But for those of us who knew them, their usual selves, we stared to see the changes.

  No one laughed, not anymore. No one looked at anyone when they spoke. No one grabbed a friend by the waist. People touched, but not like before. Women and girls quietly stroked each other’s hair. Among the grieving men and boys, brothers and fathers to the dead girls, talking gave way to shoulder squeezing and lengthy handshakes.

  My father reined Whiteface to a slow walking halt in the shade of two old oaks. Morning service was still an hour and a half away.

  Amafo gripped the side rail of the wagon and swung himself to the ground. Whiteface whinnied and neighed. As Dad tied the reins to a tree, Amafo pulled his hat low and stepped into the woods. Moments later he reappeared in the midst of the grieving ones. Pokoni gripped my hand and we both watched him move among his new brethren. Slow and slower still, he lost himself among them.

  My eyes teared up to see him stooped and hollowed through with sadness, but Pokoni only smiled and said, “Sweet child, you ’bout to see why I love your ’mafo so. Stop your tears and watch.”

  Amafo soon stood before Amelia Chukma, Lillie’s mother. He took her hands, both hands, and held them for the longest time. Though she had not been at our last night’s gathering, Mrs. Chukma knew the all of it. Her mouth dropped to see the bruises on my Amafo’s face. She shook her head and smiled a sweet and tender smile.

  Her hand seemed to lift apart from her will, as if awakening from a dull, numb sleep. Her fingers softly sketched the purple lines and swollen flesh of my grandfather. She gently moved her fingertips across Amafo’s face.

  I watched a leaf fall, swaying back and forth. In one movement, Amafo lifted his palm to Amelia’s head and guided her to his shoulder. In the thin arms of Amafo, Mrs. Chukma started slow, as if feeling her way at it, then she shook and sobbed––deep, long wailing sobs.

  At first the fellow mourners ignored this loud intrusion, but soon they turned to look. One by one they moved to comfort, some to Amelia, some to their own wives, some to quiet the fears of their still-living children. The wailing cry we needed came bursting forth. A graveyard cry was not enough, not for this scorching act.

  This was the final day the mourners gathered by themselves.

  Serpent of Brass

  Rose

  Brother Willis arrived soon with his wife and seven children. Out of respect, Amafo waited till the preacher spotted him and nodded, then he moved to help with the horses. Jamey dashed to the dirt play yard by the church, where the Willis children were already ignoring their mother.

  “Stay near the wagon and don’t get your clothes dirty before church!”

  The Willis children were pelting one another with dirt clods in the usual order. The oldest was clobbering the next oldest and so on, as mischief slid down the branches of the Willis family tree till the three-year-old sat in the mud making the baby eat dirt against his will.

  “Church just would not be the same without those Willis children,” Pokoni once said. “Reverend Willis could rant and rave all day about the demons of Hell and nobody would listen. But take one look at those children of his and you will never again doubt that demons are real. Yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

  Samuel had more sense than all the oth
ers put together. He knew not to involve Roberta Jean in their mischief making. Respect for her standing in the community as a young lady had little to do with Samuel’s thinking.

  Samuel avoided Roberta Jean because of the big black rock she carried in her purse. She had discovered the rock in the lava beds of the Kiamichi Mountains during a summer church campout with other girls her age. She hid it deep in her purse before anyone saw her. That night she explained her theft to the Lord.

  “Dear Lord, please forgive me for taking that rock from the lava beds even after we had all promised Miss Stella we would not take anything. I don’t think you’ll ever understand why I took it seeing as how you don’t have any mean little brothers. So I am not asking for your blessing, just your forgiveness.

  “I don’t plan on ever having to use this rock. Somehow I think just having it handy will be enough to protect me. Amen.”

  Samuel knew of the rock, had even tried to steal it a few times, sneaking into Roberta Jean’s room when she was away. But Roberta Jean never, ever left home without the rock. Barely did she ever leave her room without it. Thus, from his early years, Samuel granted his big sister Roberta Jean her place in the family. She had a weapon and he was convinced she would use it if threatened.

  The younger members of the Willis gang were far less bothered. I fully expected one of them to be clobbered by the black rock. In fact, the promise of such a clobbering was one of the main attractions of the First Christian Church of Skullyville, and one reason not to miss a single Sunday service.

  On this Sunday, when middle child Blue Ned Willis came skulking from the blackjack oak shadows towards Roberta Jean, she at first pretended not to notice him. Blue Ned lifted his arm and took aim with a glob of hard round mud. Roberta Jean casually reached into her purse and lifted the black rock, holding it high and flashing its sharp edges in the sunlight.

  Even a dumb-as-the-dirt-clod-he-held child like Blue Ned Willis understood this message. He shrugged as if to say, Why waste a good mud clod on you anyway? —and ran in search of other victims.