House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

  The next day, at Maggie’s request, the best trim carpenter in Spiro fashioned her a make-do leg till the real one arrived from the Sears and Roebuck’s catalog. Less than forty-eight hours after her Uncle Samuel buried his favorite niece’s leg in his back pasture, only to have Billy Lawton dig it up and feed it to his hogs, Maggie strapped the leather harness to her thigh, strode out the back door, and dug fence post holes with her grandfather till suppertime.

  Or so the story goes.

  While it was true that Hiram Blackstone could be a bullheaded and cantankerous boss, it was also true that Maggie gave as much as she took. Maggie was self-assured. Hiram was indecisive. She was also bigger, stronger, and more quick-witted than poor Hiram, whose only real advantage lay in the fact that he was the boss.

  Maggie’s eyes were green and bright and her face was full. She was round-figured and mounds of auburn hair fell about her face and shoulders.

  Hiram’s face was thin and his hair was graying and sparse. Though he combed long strands of it from his left ear to his right, patches of scabby yellow scalp shone through. His blue eyes darted about so fast even regular customers found it difficult to trust him. His high-pitched voice often wavered and trailed away, as if he expected the customer to complete his thoughts.

  Several times a month, Maggie talked Hiram into a sale. She had a ready-made sign, announcing SALE TODAY in bright blue letters. She placed the sign in the display window even before prices had been determined. She relished these mini-events and would dash throughout the store marking down prices on overstocked items, generating a flurry of customers and buying.

  For the duration of the sale Hiram would loom over customers, muttering, “You better buy that cloth now. She’s marked it too cheap and any minute I’m very likely to change my mind about this sale.”

  Hiram had a favorite annoying line he used on inquisitive customers, whether it applied to the situation or not. “Some do. Some don’t.”

  That was it.

  “Will these hinges work with those doors?”

  “Some do. Some don’t.”

  “Do your sewing machines come with a guarantee?”

  “Some do. Some don’t.”

  “Will these nails rust?”

  “Some do. Some don’t.”

  “Will this rope hold a horse for breaking?”

  “Some do. Some don’t.”

  Hiram rarely listened to customers and viewed them as a nuisance he would much rather do without. Truth was, without Maggie Johnston, the Spiro Drygoods Store would have struggled to survive even though Hiram Blackstone had no competition in Spiro.

  The Monday morning of Amafo’s ride to town, Maggie cajoled Hiram into throwing “the first sale of the month!” Hiram was sitting at his desk, contentedly counting his money. Without warning, he heard the familiar thumping of stump against hardwood floor.

  “Mr. Blackstone,” Maggie declared, bursting into the office, “we are running out of shelf space for all these children’s clothes. It is time to put some cash in the register. You know a sale always brings in the customers.”

  “Some do. Some don’t,” said Hiram, and that was all the approval Maggie needed. She thumped her way to the front window, separated the curtains, and with her sign already in hand, announced to mingling sidewalk browsers that the sale was on.

  From his viewing point above town, Amafo noticed the commotion at the drygoods store. Like all shy folks, he realized that the easiest place to remain inconspicuous was in the midst of a crowd. He left Whiteface tied to the tree and joined throngs of townspeople on their way to the store.

  Customers gathered on the sidewalk, watching the spectacle unfolding in the front window. Maggie plopped herself backwards, then rolled over and stood up in the display window. With pen in hand, she crossed out current prices and replaced them with lesser ones. Most items—children’s pants and shirts and dresses—were reduced by more than half of the original price.

  “Maggie Johnston, you get down from that window this minute!” hollered Hiram in his squeakiest voice.

  “I’ll come down when I’m finished,” said Maggie.

  Hiram resorted to a hissing whisper. “Maggie, you are creating a sale with no profit. We will starve. You will be out on the streets by tomorrow.”

  “Maybe that will be a blessing,” said Maggie. “I’m sure the good people of Spiro would never let a girl go hungry. My wooden leg doesn’t eat that much.”

  The crowd howled with laughter with each exchange. But Hiram was not laughing. He was turning beet red. Seizing the opportunity, a skinny grandmother fought her way through the door and said to Maggie, “Dear, would you mind handing me that cute little boy’s blue suit as soon as you finish changing the price to something affordable?”

  Maggie made the requested change and handed her the outfit.

  “Bless you, my child,” the woman said.

  Hiram grabbed a sleeve of the coat and gave it a good tug. The woman was as strong-armed as she was strong-willed. She fought back. The tug-of-war lasted less than a minute. A loud rippppp cut the silence, froze the crowd temporarily, and left Hiram holding a tiny blue sleeve torn at the seam.

  He looked as if he might cry. Maggie leapt from the window and wrapped her arms around Hiram to steady herself, since her wooden leg couldn’t bend at the joint like a regular one.

  “It’s a good thing I know how to sew,” she said, taking the sleeve from Hiram. She then turned to the customer, who stood holding the remainder of the suit.

  “We will knock an additional ten percent off this item, ma’am, for the inconvenience and the rudeness you had to bear.”

  To the crowd she said, “Let’s all come inside. I’ll make coffee for everyone and we can enjoy the new prices.” Hiram fumed.

  “Don’t mind Hiram,” said Maggie. Amafo entered the store with this second wave of customers. When everyone else had filed past Hiram, Amafo stood beside him in a quiet show of support.

  “Are you alright?” Amafo asked.

  “Yes,” Hiram said, spitting out the words. “Leave me alone.”

  Hiram turned to glare at this new intruder, but when he saw Amafo a change came over him. “That bruised face, those broken glasses,” Hiram thought. His mind connected the man before him with stories floating around about Marshal Hardwicke and an elderly Choctaw at the train station.

  “Thank you for asking. I am fine,” Hiram said. Amafo nodded and strolled to the invisible safety of a rack of men’s suits.

  After a brief disappearance to the stockroom, Maggie returned, thumping her wooden leg in double time. She dashed to a cluster of ladies fingering spools of thread.

  “Pick out the thread you like,” she said. “I’ll come around and mark it down soon’s I get to it.”

  Hiking her skirt and lifting her Sears and Roebuck’s leg, Maggie tapped a short older gentleman on the shoulder and asked him, “Sir, would you mind pulling this shoe from my wooden leg. Other than muffling the thumping when I walk, it’s totally useless and it slows me down. I need all the speed I can get today.”

  The man knelt before her and lifted her leg as if it were a religious relic. Maggie saw for the first time the dark blue skin of his swollen face­––and at that moment a shift in time occurred, a noticeable shift that struck Maggie in a way she would later describe as like Saul on the road to Damascus.

  She gasped and lifted her palms to cover her face and eyes.

  “You I know,” she said. “I dreamed about you last night.” She paused and breathed into her hands. “How did you find me?”

  “I know about you, Maggie Johnston.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Amafo. I am Amafo. It means grandfather in Choctaw, and that’s what most folks call me. Amafo Goode.”

  “Will you…lift your head…so I can see you?” Amafo tilted back his hat and lifted his face to Maggie. She touched his bruised face as only Pokoni would, soft and tender, running her fingertips across his cuts.

 
; Maggie lowered her leg to the floor and straightened her dress.

  “Please stay right here. Don’t go. Don’t move. Wait for me. Please.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” said Amafo.

  Maggie strode to the front of the store where Hiram still stood.

  “Hiram,” she said, taking off her apron as she spoke, “I have private affairs I must attend to. We have more customers than we’ve had in a week of Sundays. I brought ’em in, you can take over from here. I will see you in an hour.”

  “You are not leaving me here alone with these people,” whispered Hiram. “I’ll fire you, I’m warning you.”

  “You’ll be fine, Hiram. Just smile and take their money.”

  She returned to Amafo, saying, “Let’s go to the stockroom. Hiram will have his hands full out here. He won’t bother us.”

  She led Amafo to a desk where two chairs sat facing each other and gestured for him to sit. In the quiet of the room Maggie studied his face.

  “Marshal Hardwicke did this to you?”

  “Well,” said Amafo, “I ’spec the board had something to do with it.”

  “Hmmm. Yes, I can see that. I want to ask you something, and please don’t say no till you hear me out. Normally I would just tell you what I was going to do, but I don’t think you’d put up with that.”

  Amafo smiled and said, “I just might surprise you. I’m really just a pitiful old Indian. I’m not nearly as strong as I look.”

  Seeing how thin Amafo was, how his shoulders slumped, how his skin hung loose on his battered face, Maggie had to smile. “You are strong enough to still have a sense of humor. I’m not sure I could be that strong.”

  Amafo’s eyes sparkled.

  “I have a friend, an older man, a good man,” said Maggie. “He’s a doctor. Please let me bring him here. I want him to look at you. Please let me do this. I will never stop worrying unless you do.”

  Amafo sighed and rose as if to go. He opened the back door and stood looking down the alley. When Maggie did nothing, he said, “You would just let me go, without trying to stop me?” Maggie saw the smile on his face.

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes. You’ll be fine, just stay out of Hiram’s way. He’s a nice man, really. He just forgets his manners sometimes.”

  Amafo returned to his chair as Maggie thump-sped past him. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks. Amafo knew that whatever happened from this day forward, Maggie Johnston would be his friend.

  “What a team we make,” he said to himself. “A beat-up old Choctaw and a wooden-legged woman. Yessir,” he laughed, “Marshal Hardwicke won’t know what hit him.”

  Maggie returned in less than a quarter of an hour. A tall elderly gentleman carrying a black bag followed her into the room. He was wearing smart brown pants and a suit coat. He removed his hat, showing a thick head of white hair, and nodded at Amafo, waiting to be introduced.

  “This is Dr. McGilleon,” Maggie said. “Doctor, this is Amafo Goode, the Choctaw man I told you about.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said McGilleon, extending his hand. Amafo returned the handshake. “Now, let me take a look at those cuts,” said the doctor, settling himself on a chair and gently removing Amafo’s glasses.

  Thirty minutes later, Dr. McGilleon took one final look at Amafo's wounds. “They should be healed in a few days,” he said, rising from his chair. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Goode.”

  After thanking the departing doctor, Amafo gingerly patted his cheek and wondered aloud what Pokoni would have to say. “My wife’ll have to pull them bandages off and go lookin’ around, just to make sure he did it right.”

  “I’d do the same,” said Maggie.

  “I should be going. I’ve come to Spiro to have a friendly chat with the marshal.”

  “You are a funny man,” Maggie said, shaking her head.

  Amafo stared at the floor and said nothing.

  “You are serious,” said Maggie.

  “Yes, I am. I mean to show him I am not afraid of him.”

  “Amafo, you have had a long day already. Please wait till morning. Come see me first and we can talk about it. Will you promise me that?”

  Amafo closed his eyes, nodded, and rose to go. He made the slow climb uphill to the elm grove where Whiteface waited. Before turning home, Amafo knelt to pray.

  “Yakoke, Lord, for all the good people you lead me to today. Let your blessings fall on all these Nahullos. Thy will be done.”

  Terrance Lowell

  The day after meeting Amafo, Maggie woke up laughing. She’d been dreaming of one of her life’s finest moments, a day in her thirteenth year when tragedy turned to triumph. It happened thus, two weeks after Maggie’s leg was amputated.

  “You know you must be more careful now that you’ve lost your leg,” her mother told her over breakfast.

  “I did not lose my leg!” insisted Maggie. “When you lose something, you don’t know where it is. I know where my leg is. It’s buried in Uncle Samuel’s pasture, that’s where it is. It isn’t lost.”

  Actually, Maggie’s leg was lost. Unknown to her, no-good Billy Lawton had already dug her leg up and fed it to his hogs, so in point of fact her leg was lost.

  “Maggie, dear, you must think of this as a blessing,” her mother said.

  “Mother, puleeeeze do not say that anymore.”

  “Now Maggie, you’ll be able to do things that no one else can do. It is a blessing.”

  Maggie retreated to her room, slamming the door behind her. Ten minutes later she said, in her best sing-song imitation of her mother’s voice, “Mother dear. Come see what I can do that nobody else can do.”

  When her mother entered the room, Maggie sat on the side of her bed with a sweet smile on her face. She held a small-toothed hacksaw in her right hand, while her left hand held a handkerchief, a lavender silk handkerchief Mrs. Grisham had given her just yesterday. “To help you in your time of loss,” Mrs. Grisham had said.

  At the precise moment her mother realized she was about to witness something truly sardonic, Maggie lifted the lavender kerchief, revealing a missing four-inch chunk from her leg. She had sawed a wooden plug from her handmade leg.

  “Maggie, what have you done?”

  “Now, Mother, don’t get upset. I’ve just lost my leg—or part of my leg. Can you help me find it?”

  “ Oh, Maggie!”

  “But Mother, wait. You were right. I can do things with my leg no one else can do. I can saw my leg. Anytime I want, I can just saw away. What a popular girl I’ll be at campouts. No need to bring firewood. Just bring Maggie!”

  Her mother ran from the room crying, but the idea that maybe she could do things with her wooden leg that normal legs would not accomplish intrigued Maggie.

  If nothing else, she thought, I now carry a near-lethal weapon, a club with which to bludgeon any boys who tease me.

  Thirty-one years later, Maggie’s wooden weapon did save a life, Hiram Blackstone’s, from the dull blade of a butter knife. Maggie actually saved three lives––her own, Hiram’s, and a stranger named Terrance Lowell. But Terrance’s problems began long before he met Maggie.

  Terrance Lowell was misunderstood. Anybody could see that.

  His first-year school teacher never recognized his talent. One morning Terrance put his teacher’s new straw hat on the back of his pet turtle.

  “Come see the magic hat!” he shouted. As the unseen turtle slid the hat across the schoolroom floor, the teacher grew angry. While she fussed at Terrance, the turtle enjoyed his breakfast.

  How was Terrance to know turtles eat straw?

  One mishap after another plagued young Terrance, till he met Miss Palmer. She was the fourth in a series of teachers who did their best with Terrance. Miss Palmer was actually making progress. Under her tutelage, Terrance came to school twice a week. This was progress.

  By mid-October, Miss Palmer, having realized she had a truly sad little boy on her hands, determined to make a difference.
One morning, while the other children were busy with a reading assignment, she approached his desk.

  “Terrance.”

  “Yes,” he said, staring at his untied shoestrings, sprawled in random squiggles on the wooden schoolhouse floor.

  “You have nice eyes.”

  Terrance waited for her to continue, waited to be rebuked, for his shoestrings, maybe his laziness. Miss Palmer also waited, till Terrance lifted his eyes. When he saw her smiling, he quickly looked to the floor.

  Miss Palmer touched his shoulder and said, “They are fine eyes, Terrance. I call their color hazel. Look at them in the mirror sometime.”

  That very evening, Terrance did as she suggested. He looked at his eyes in a mirror, a broken piece of a mirror. His father had hung the jagged glass on the rear wall of the barn. Terrance scooted a chair to the crowded corner where his father kept a small basin, a razor, the feared razor strap, and the broken mirror, held in place by three rusty nails.

  Climbing on the chair, Terrance settled himself into a remarkable private moment. He first tried sneaking up on his own reflection, looking quickly then glancing away. Finally satisfied that his own eyes held no mockery, unlike the eyes of others, he stared and stared, bewildered by the beauty of their coloring. He saw sunbursts of soft yellows and greens.

  “They are my eyes,” he said. “Mine eyes.” He took a long, soft breath and whispered, “I have nice eyes.”

  He leaned so close to the mirror a white cloud, borne of his breath, covered his reflection. Lightly touching the mirror’s slick surface with three fingertips, he discovered that his very own fingers could wipe away clouds of blindness. So he moved closer, drawn by the miracle unfolding before him, his own eyes filling with light-rippling tears.

  The next day, just before the lunchtime break, Miss Palmer said his name. “Terrance.”

  Terrance raised his hazel eyes to her. “Yes?” he asked.

  “I made a special pecan bread for the students. Will you help me carry the box from my wagon?”

  On the way to the wagon she said, “Your shoes look nice today.”