House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

Terrance glanced at his feet and realized he had tied his shoes without even thinking about it. Miss Palmer saw it too, and her response would change his life.

  “From now on, you and I will be friends,” she said, patting his head. “And you will learn to read.”

  Terrance tossed and turned in his bunk that night. He didn’t go to school for a month. Those words circled like swamp mosquitoes around his head, day and night.

  “It just ain’t fitting. My daddy cain’t read. My momma cain’t read. Maybe if I wuz gonna be one of them college goers or sumptin, but I ain’t never gonna be. I am who I is, and who I is is Terrance, son of my daddy and my momma’s best friend!”

  In a rare moment that night, as he blew his nose on his pillow, Terrance made a decision. “I still love her and forgive her her transdressings, but I got to leave a teacher woman who wants me to read. That’s just how it’s got to be!”

  The next morning he packed his dirty pillowcase with everything that mattered, waited till the sun was hovering between rising and noonday, and trudged to school for the final time. He stared at her through the schoolhouse window till the students pointed and laughed. When Miss Palmer smiled at him, he gave her a small wave and turned to face the world.

  With all hope of marrying Miss Palmer gone, Terrance Lowell entered a dark period of his life. With every passing year, Terrance strove desperately to be bad. He wanted more than life itself to be a true outlaw, a wanted man, a desperado waiting for a train, with his very own wanted poster, proudly displaying his unshaven face and unbrushed teeth.

  Terrance lived like a locust-eating hermit in the scriptural desert of rundown saloons, determined to carve his place forever on the tree trunk of the West, a man everyone would recognize and fear––Terrance Lowell, badman.

  In his dreams.

  Terrance first tried gambling. He hung out at saloons with killers and robbers. He started by dealing cards from the bottom of the deck, a ploy which immediately caught the attention of every player at his table. Known killers leaned forward and eyed Terrance with suspicion. Hands flew to expectant holsters as outlaws readied themselves to riddle Terrance with bullet holes. He had visions of lying blood-splattered and breathing his last breath on the whiskey-sotted floor of a cowtown barroom.

  “Tell Miss Palmer I still love her, but I ain’t learnin’ ta read,” his raspy voice would utter these, his last words. And somewhere Miss Palmer would feel a tear flow down her cheek as she thought of him, truly her favorite student ever––poor misunderstood Terrance.

  Terrance never suffered this fate, however. He was so inept at cards, he lost anyway, badly, in spite of his cheating. He moved from bottom-dealing to hiding cards. He hid cards in his boots, under his hat, up his sleeves. Nothing helped.

  Terrance became a well-known gambler, not famous like Doc Holliday, but renowned on a regional level. He was welcomed at card tables across Oklahoma and Texas. Barroom clients bought him drinks. Dancing girls––not the younger, prettier ones, but the older ones with bulging thighs and bright red mouths––they’d surround the card table whenever Terrance Lowell sat down to play, just to watch him pull cards from everywhere and still lose.

  In his sober moments, Terrance admitted to himself that, other than his unsatisfied ambition to be a badman, he was living a comfortable life. Local businessmen knew that no real money would change hands when Terrance appeared. He didn’t have any. And where else could very low stakes poker attract such attention?

  Ahh, the girls, the notoriety, the infamy of sitting at a table and playing cards with Terrance Lowell himself! And this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity only cost a businessman a few drinks and sometimes a few dollars for staking Terrance for a hand or two.

  But Terrance Lowell’s life of glory was short-lived.

  The beginning of the end came when Terrance decided he needed a gun, if even just for show. People, after all, asked questions.

  “How many people you killed, Terrance, uh, Mr. Lowell?”

  Terrance saw quickly that a shy muttering of, “Aww, not all that many,” left onlookers disappointed, bored, and likely to wander off to more colorful conversation.

  With a gun he could pull back his coat, grip his pistol handle, glare at the questioner and growl, “You could count the notches on the barrel of my gun. But then again you might just die trying.”

  Terrance decided the time for fantasies was over. He needed a real reputation, a real criminal record. He needed a real gun.

  There was one place on earth where Terrance knew he was always welcome. Red Oak, Oklahoma. If he was down on his luck, he could count on the local marshal to let him sleep in the city jail. All Terrance had to do was help him drink his whiskey and show him a few card tricks. One evening, before retiring to his cell, Terrance was admiring a Colt .45 pistol hanging on the wall of the jail.

  “Your deal, Terrance.”

  “Nice gun.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty one,” agreed the marshal. “It belongs to a horse thief we caught last night. Looks like he’s gonna be hanged. He’s got a nice little wife and four young’uns. It’s a real shame, ’cause his wife can’t even shoot a gun. Don’t know what’ll happen to that pistol.”

  “Real nice gun.”

  “Yeah, the gun that won the West,” said the marshal.

  “From what?”

  “What you saying, Terrance?”

  “Won the West from what?”

  “How am I supposed to know? From a bunch of drunk Indians, I guess.”

  “Some battle.”

  “Well, you gotta admit, Terrance, cowboys and Indians did get a lotta press.”

  “Good-looking gun,” said Terrance.

  “Terrance, why don’t you just shut up and take the gun! I’ll just say I never saw it. Deal the cards!”

  So Terrance Lowell had a gun. Now the only decision was trains or banks? Which to rob? Realizing banks were easier to catch, Terrance thought he’d try one of them first.

  Spiro First National Bank seemed like a good one. It wasn’t too far away and nobody knew him in Spiro. The fact that the Spiro bank was one of the richest in Indian Territory never entered Terrance’s mind. He was, after all, on the trail for glory, not mere financial gain.

  At the precise moment Maggie Johnston left through the rear door of the Spiro Hardware Store to fetch a doctor for Amafo, Terrance Lowell saddled his horse, patted his hip where his newly acquired gun rested, and turned his sights to Spiro and long-awaited glory.

  Like gravy on a well-fired stove, the plot thickened.

  Snakes and Spiders

  Rose

  “Amafo is coming!” Jamey hollered. “He’s almost here.” Jamey dashed in the kitchen to tell Pokoni the news. “I saw him riding Whiteface just now, coming over the hill.

  “Leave him be,” said Pokoni. “He’ll be very tired, too tired to talk. You know he don’t like to talk much anyway.”

  “But, Pokoni,” Jamey said, “it looks like he’s been in a fight. His face is wrapped in bandages.”

  Pokoni dried her hands and walked to the road to met Amafo. They spoke for a short while and Pokoni touched his face several times, inspecting the bandages. I could see they both were smiling. Amafo led Whiteface to the barn where Daddy was feeding a load of hay to the milk cows.

  “Go on inside,” he said to Amafo, taking Whiteface by the reins. “I’ll see she’s fed and watered.”

  At the supper table, Jamey grabbed the chair next to Amafo. My chair. He rubbed and wiggled against Amafo all supper long, staring bug-eyed at him till Daddy picked his plate up and said, “Time for you to get upstairs. Leave Amafo alone, son.”

  “He will talk when he is ready,” Pokoni whispered, and Amafo pretended not to hear. He did not say a single word at the table. He just cleaned his plate and moved to the living room. I knew if I helped Pokoni and my mother clean the kitchen, then sat quietly on the floor by the fireplace, Momma would let me stay up and hear what Amafo had to say.

  Once everyo
ne was settled around the fireplace, Amafo appeared to fall asleep. His head dropped to his chest and I saw his shirt move up and down in his napping way. Then I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew my Amafo was standing over me with a cup of hot cocoa.

  “I hope you like it a little burnt,” he said. “It’s the only way I know how to make it.” I nodded and took the hot cup from his hands.

  “That’s what you claim, anyway, funny man,” Pokoni said.

  Looking around the room, I saw that my mother and father had already gone to bed. Pokoni smiled at me through the rising steam of her cocoa.

  “You are learning to sleep anywhere,” she said to me, “just like old people.” We sipped our hot cocoa, blowing cooling whispers in the dark till the rocking sliver of half moon shone through the window.

  “I made two friends today,” said Amafo, and he told us about meeting John Burleson and Maggie Johnston.

  ef

  Amafo arose the next morning in the same hushed hour before dawn, somewhat relieved that his night of fitful sleep was over, a night of rolling on his tender cheek and lying awake in dull and throbbing waves of pain. Following a breakfast of bread, coffee, and eggs with runny yellow yolks, he climbed aboard Whiteface and pointed her nose in the direction of Spiro. Pokoni followed him only as far as the gate this morning. Shortly later the white fog enveloped both horse and rider.

  Once under the elms, Amafo dismounted, tied Whiteface to a stout branch, and knelt to pray. Ten minutes later he sat at his table at the train station, cupping a mug and breathing in the rising aroma of hot coffee.

  “I see you’ve met Doctor McGilleon,” John Burleson said, touching his own face and easing into the chair opposite Amafo.

  “Yes,” Amafo nodded. “Maggie Johnston made sure of that.”

  “So you’ve met Maggie?”

  “Ummm.”

  “Well, she’s a one-man army, Maggie is. You are safe in Spiro as soon as word gets ’round you’re under Maggie’s wing.”

  A pause followed while both men sipped their coffee and gazed at the empty railroad tracks.

  “You seen the marshal yet?”

  “No. ’Spec maybe today.”

  “Folks are talking already, you know.”

  “I figured they would be by now.”

  “You still think it’s a good idea, you coming to town so soon?”

  “You ’member how you learned to ride a horse?” asked Amafo.

  Burleson laughed softly and took another sip of coffee. “You mean climb right back on after you’ve been throwd?”

  Amafo nodded.

  “That might work. Long as you remember you are dealing with a mean man, a man as mean as a wild boar. And a coward too. If he lifts a hand to you again, you let me know. Hardwicke is married to a lady who seems to bruise awful easy.”

  Amafo took a long breath.

  “I don’t believe he’s gonna bother me much anymore,” Amafo said. “Well, I ’spec you have work to do. Believe I be going. Can I pay for the coffee?”

  Burleson put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Amafo, my friend. We have an agreement about your coffee here, remember? Besides, I owe you something.”

  “You don’t owe me,” Amafo said, touching the bandages on his face. “None of this was your business.”

  “We all owe you. We’ve been blind to Hardwicke and his ways for too long.”

  Amafo quietly made his way down the sidewalk to the hardware store. With his hat pulled low, he settled on a pine bench by the front door. Five minutes later Maggie emerged, carrying a broom and eyeing a dusty cobweb in the display window.

  “I thought I told you to move on down the road,” she said, swinging the broom and splitting the cobweb.

  The uprooted spider landed on the floor and crept through Maggie’s legs and out the door. Seeing no spider, Maggie began a series of small and comical pirouettes. Using her wooden leg as support, she turned around and around, swatting the floor with the broom as she did so. Amafo laughed out loud and Maggie flashed him a look through the window.

  “Oh,” she said, stepping outside to join him. “I didn’t know you were there, watching me make a fool of myself. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was having too much fun watching you,” he said.

  “Well, I just hate these spiders. If I thought setting fire to the place would get rid of ’em, I might be tempted to do it.”

  Amafo raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. “You would burn helpless momma spiders just trying to make a home?”

  Maggie leaned her broom against the storefront wall and sat beside Amafo. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  The two sat side by side for several minutes, walking the road of thoughts without speaking. Maggie smoothed her dress and laid her hand on Amafo’s knee.

  “If the truth be told,” she said, “I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a family. Especially since I lost my mother. I’ve always had somebody to take care of, you know.”

  “I’m real thankful ’bout you taking care of me,” Amafo said. When Maggie patted his knee, he said softly, “Maggie Johnston has a soft spot in her heart. We wouldn’t want that to get around town.”

  Maggie beamed and smiled at him. When he cast his gaze to the floor, she mistook it for shyness. Actually, Amafo had spotted the spider.

  He stuck the tip of his boot in the spider’s path and she crawled over his boot and up his britches leg. He reached down and took her on his fingertips, then gently placed her in his pocket. The spider settled in a cluster of thread and lint.

  “I been visiting with John Burleson down at the railroad depot.”

  “John is a good man,” said Maggie.

  “Then I thought I would come up and see how Hiram was getting along, having to put up with you and all.”

  “You seem to forget, old man, I still have a broom handy,” said Maggie. “For all I know, you might be part spider.”

  “Mag-geeee!” bellowed a voice from behind the counter.

  Maggie and Amafo turned to see Hiram, hands on hips and scowling, impatient at Maggie’s “loitering on the job,” as he was wont to call it. Hiram would die before admitting that Maggie’s socializing accounted for the bulk of the store’s sales, but Maggie knew it.

  “I think I hear my mother calling,” whispered Maggie, and the two smiled like mischievous kids. As they nodded their good-byes, Amafo looked across the street and settled his eyes on the true purpose of his visit.

  “I’ll stop by later,” said Amafo, not looking at Maggie. She caught the serious tone in his voice and followed his gaze to Marshal Hardwicke, standing in the doorway of his office. The morning sun caught the eave of the building and cast a shadow across the marshal.

  “I’ll put coffee on,” Maggie said. “Let’s go inside.” When Amafo didn’t move, she gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “Hiram won’t mind. We’ve all had dealings with the marshal. Enjoy your coffee and we’ll visit. Best to leave the marshal alone.”

  “I’m here to pay him a visit,” said Amafo. He touched his bruised and tender cheekbone. “This affair is not over yet.”

  “Amafo, look at me,” Maggie said. “I know that man. I have worked across the street from him for twenty years. He is meaner than you can ever know.”

  When Amafo did not reply, she turned to the marshal. “This is no game to him,” she said. “He could kill you in the dark of night, and you would never know what hit you. No one would ever know.”

  After a long pause, she added, “No one in town would even want to know. They wouldn’t care. You are safe. You are well. Leave it alone.”

  “Seems to me leave it alone is what folks have been doing for those twenty years you talk about. It hasn’t solved much, don’t seem to me like.”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “Amafo, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “This old man is not gonna get hurt,” Amafo said. “You got to trust me on this, Maggie.” He rose, put a hand on the wall to
steady himself, and turned to the marshal.

  When Amafo stepped from the sidewalk, Maggie knew she could do nothing to stop him. She entered the store and walked quickly past Hiram.

  “Maggie,” he said. “There are shelves to stock and work to do. Your loitering is costing us money.”

  Maggie stopped and gave him a look he seldom saw.

  “That old man is about to get himself killed, Hiram. I will stock the shelves later,” she said.

  Hiram swallowed twice and lifted his eyebrows in a curl of a question mark. “Oh my.” As Hiram watched, Maggie lifted his keys from his desk drawer and made her way to the gun display. She unlocked the cabinet and removed a shotgun.

  “What are you doing, Maggie?”

  “I’m borrowing a gun.” She scrambled through dozens of boxes in the bottom drawer of the cabinet. When she found the matching shells, she began loading the shotgun.

  “You can’t borrow a shotgun, Maggie. Put it back.”

  “Then I am buying a shotgun,” said Maggie. “Take it out of my pay.”

  “Maggie!”

  “For the last time, Hiram, if Amafo dies because we do nothing, it will hang over our heads for the rest of our lives. We are bigger than that, Hiram. You and I both. We are better people than that. Now let me do what we both know is right.”

  “Maggie.”

  “What?”

  “You can have the shotgun. Just see that Amafo doesn’t get hurt.”

  “Thank you, Hiram,” Maggie said. She quickly made her way to the back of the storeroom and pulled down the ladder to the attic. Hiram steadied it for her as she climbed.

  “I’ll hand you the gun,” he said, reaching up for it. When Maggie hesitated, he said, “Maggie, I will hand you the gun.” She gave it to him, then turned to the task of climbing the ladder with her single mobile leg. When she reached the attic, Hiram climbed two rungs and Maggie leaned to take the rifle by the barrel.

  At its highest point the ceiling was only five feet tall. Maggie ducked, then fell to her knees and crawled to a small window facing the street.

  During her first year of employment, Maggie had sewn bright green curtains for all the windows in the hardware store. The curtains over the attic window were the only ones still remaining. They were sunburned and browned with age. No one had pulled the blinds or parted the curtains for the past twenty years. People forgot the window was there.