by Donis Casey
“I just took a notion. I was supposed to have a field class today, but the instructor cancelled it and I don’t have another class until Monday afternoon. Besides, Ruth wrote me about the excitement y’all been having around here, so I decided I’d see for myself what was going on. Did Dad catch the tramp who carved a hunk out of his porker?” He hesitated, nodded at the shotgun in its holder on the dash in front of Mary. “You expecting to fend off bandits between here and Boynton?”
Martha snapped the reins and the horse picked up speed, jarring Gee Dub’s spine as the buggy bounced down the rutted road. “Oh, it’s just awful what happened. The thief was just a boy. Daddy trussed him up in the barn until he could take him in to Scott the next morning, but during the night somebody broke into the barn and ran him through with a spear.”
She glanced across Mary at Gee Dub, gaging his reaction to her news. He was not one to waste words in pointless exclamation, but his dark eyes were regarding her intently, his face still and one eyebrow raised. The two women took turns filling him in on the details: Crook’s broken leg, the murder of Crying Blood, the banishment of their younger sisters to town, their mother’s trip with Cousin Scott to find the Reverend Edmond in Eufaula. Martha was finishing the tale just as she pulled up in front of the barbed-wire gate that marked the entrance to the Tucker farm.
Gee Dub climbed down, swung the gate open and stood waiting until she had driven the buggy through, then closed and secured the gate again. He trudged up to where she had halted to wait for him, lifted himself back into the seat and readjusted his cap before he looked at his sister and spoke. “How’s Dad taking all this?”
It was Mary who answered. “Not so good. He’s blaming himself for leaving the boy alone for a few minutes. Long enough for someone to creep in and kill him. I think he’s pretty riled that nobody can seem to find a trace of the killer. I’m sure glad you’re here, Gee. It’ll perk Daddy up considerably to see you.”
Martha reined in front of the house to deposit her passengers before driving the buggy to the barn, but no one had time to alight before Kurt trotted around the side of the house, his blue eyes crinkled with worry, and waved his arm over his head to get their attention.
Gee Dub paused with one foot hovering in the air between buggy and ground. His eye went immediately to the holster on Kurt’s hip. Guns everywhere. The situation was far more serious than he had imagined earlier that morning when he had boarded the train in Stillwater to come home.
Kurt came to a halt next to the passenger side and reached across Gee Dub to take Mary’s hand. But when he spoke it was to his future brother-in-law. “Gee Dub, I am glad you are home. Miz Tucker is gone with the sheriff to Eufaula, and I did not know what I should do. No one is here and I did not want to leave the farm, but when Charlie come home from school a while ago I sent him to John Lee to talk with him.”
“Kurt!” Mary interrupted his narrative. “What’s going on? Where’s Daddy?”
Kurt’s gaze switched from Gee Dub’s face to Mary’s. “He is not here, Leibling. He left on horseback a few hours ago and told me to stay here for you and Miz Tucker. I think he is going to try and find the man who murdered Crying Blood.”
The siblings piled out of the buggy and stood together with Kurt in a tight bunch, silent for a moment while each tried to make his or her own sense out of this development. Gee Dub looked over at Martha, the eldest, who for all of his life had been the natural chief of the numerous tribe of Tucker children.
She, however, was looking at him.
Two pairs of dark eyes locked, the oldest daughter’s and the oldest son’s. Martha spoke first. “Mama and Scott won’t be back until this evening. When she gets home and hears what Daddy’s done she’ll have a conniption.”
“She’ll grab a firearm and go after him, I know she will!” Mary struggled not to sound as panicky as she felt. “Kurt, did Daddy tell you where he plans to find this killer?”
“He would not tell me much, but that I should let Miz Tucker know and he expected to be gone for a day or two.”
Gee Dub suddenly knew the answer as surely as if he had been told. “He’s going back to Oktaha.”
Martha looked up at her younger brother, now a head taller than she, and nodded. “You’ve been there. You know where he’s headed. Go get him, Gee. Bring him back here before Mama lights out after him.”
“Kurt, would you saddle up Penny for me? Then ride over to John Lee’s and let him know what’s happening. Martha and Mary, I reckon if y’all stay in the house with that shotgun ’til one of the fellows gets back here, you can blow the head off of anybody who tries to sneak up on you.” Gee Dub was striding across the yard by this time, his sisters on his heels. Kurt was half-way to the barn. Gee Dub began to shuck off his coat. “Just let me get out of these college duds.”
“I’ll load your Winchester,” Mary said to his back as he crashed into the house.
Chapter Forty-four
Alafair and Scott had removed their long, linen dusters and left them in the back of the auto before they mounted the porch of the little frame house and knocked on the door. Alafair observed that Scott had dressed as carefully as she in order to call on the Reverend. She had on the brand new plum-colored dress and hat that Martha had bought for her, over her objections, on their recent trip to visit relatives in Enid. Scott was wearing his good black three-piece suit and the black felt fedora he only removed from its hat box in the top of his closet for special occasions. She expected that the two of them had different reasons for taking care with their wardrobe, though. He was making an official visit as a representative of the law. She had dressed to call on the bereaved.
The man who answered the door was dressed to receive company, in a dark suit and neatly bowed string tie.
“Reverend Edmond?” Scott asked.
The man gave them a tired once-over from behind the screen door. “Yessir. Are you Sheriff Tucker from over to Boynton?”
Scott’s eyebrows peaked. “Yes sir. I’m Scott Tucker and this here is Miz Shaw Tucker, wife to my cousin. You were expecting me?”
“Come in.” The reverend pushed open the screen and stood aside to allow them to enter. Alafair examined the parlor while the reverend took Scott’s hat and ushered them to two padded armchairs positioned before a white-manteld fireplace. Reverend Edmond moved a painted side chair from under the window to the center of the room for himself. The parlor was small, but nicely furnished and well-kept, with crocheted doilies and knick knacks scattered about on top of the mantle and the Queen Anne side tables. Pictures with religious themes hung from wires on the floral-papered walls; Jesus feeding the multitudes at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus walking on the water, an angel ushering two small children across a precarious bridge. No Mrs. Edmond had yet appeared, but evidence of her hand was everywhere in this room.
When they were seated and introductions made, the Reverend answered Scott’s question as though there had been no pause. “Yes, sir, I figured you’d be by sometime today. My neighbor, Glenna Bettmann, runs the telephone exchange here in Eufaula. She stopped by yesterday evening and told me that she had spoke with the telephone operator up there.”
Scott nodded, unsurprised. “Yes, that’s how I found out where you live. I expect she told you why we was coming.”
“She said something about a young stranger who had got killed up that way, and because he had mentioned my name you figured I know who he is.”
“That’s about right, Reverend. I notice that you don’t seem overcurious about this peculiar situation. Could it be you already have an idea who our unknown victim is?”
The Reverend smiled at this. Not a happy smile, either. “Truth is I don’t know, Sheriff. But I have a fear that it may be my son…”
“Your son?” Alafair couldn’t help her exclamation. She hadn’t anticipated this possibility at all.
Reverend Edmond blinked at her as though he had forgotten she was there before he turned back to Scott and finished his sente
nce. “…who ran away from home more than two years ago, when he was thirteen. Though what he could have been doing up around Boynton, I don’t know.”
Scott picked the leather grip up off the floor next to his feet and placed it across his lap. “Well, Reverend, I don’t know anything about your son or whether our murder victim is him. I only know that before he died this young fellow mentioned your name to my cousin. Said that you tried to make a Christian out of him.”
A look of cautious relief passed over the Reverend’s face. “That could be any one of a bunch of boys. I’ve been pastoring here in Eufaula for near to twenty years, first at the Indian school then at the Methodist church yonder. What’s the boy’s name?”
“That’s the problem. We don’t know for sure. He told my cousin that he was Crying Blood.”
“A Creek boy?”
“He looked like a half-breed to me. He was dressed up like an old-time Creek, though. I was told that Crying Blood ain’t a proper name.”
Reverend Edmond’s shoulders inched up and down. “Probably not. As I understand the Creek, it means he was trying to set right the untimely death of a relative.”
“So I was told. I’d like to find out who he really was and get him back to his folks if I can. Need to find out something about him if we’re going to discover who killed him, too.”
“I’ll help if I can, Sheriff. Can you describe him to me?”
Scott cast a glance at Alafair. “I can do better than that, Reverend. If you’ll step over to the sideboard with me, I’ll show you a photograph of the boy that I had took at the undertaker’s.”
The two men stood and moved to the side of the room where Scott put his leather case on the long bureau, opened it and withdrew a large brown envelope. Alafair sat where she was since she was plainly not invited to this viewing. Scott was being gentlemanly, she knew, protecting her feminine sensibilities. But she was irritated nonetheless. She had seen plenty of ugliness in her life, including the sight of a wooden spear protruding from a boy’s heart, and she had yet to succumb to the vapors. She sat back in the chair, resigned to observing the proprieties.
At first, the only thing she could see was the men’s serge-clad backs and inclined heads as Scott withdrew the photograph from the envelope. The reverend snatched it out of his hand and made a noise that caused Alafair’s heart to sink.
Reverend Edmond could only manage a strangled whisper when he finally spoke. “That’s my boy, Sheriff. That’s Reed.”
Chapter Forty-five
Shaw set up camp in the clearing in front of the house, just as he and James and the boys had on the night of the hunt. This time Shaw approached the derelict house and walked the perimeter. It was a sturdy enough house, built of tight split rails packed with mud and boar bristles. The south side was shaded by tall hawthorns. At one time, it must have been a pleasant home, a wonderful place to sit out of an evening with the family, tell stories and sing, have a piece of pie.
There wasn’t much left of what had once been a wide, covered front porch. The roof of the porch had long fallen in and fallen apart, termite-eaten, rain- and sun-busted, blown about by the wind and storms. Weeds and brush grew up through the floorboards. The whole house listed dangerously to the right, athwart the prevalent wind. One more good thunderstorm and it would go.
He scanned the front of the house, and a spot of color above the lintel caught his eye. It appeared to be a painted stick. He moved up to get a better look, then took an involuntary step back when he realized what it was. A carving of a snake. It was about a foot long and less than the diameter of his thumb, smooth and straight but for a couple of undulations in the middle. One end had been whittled to a point. The other end had an oval head with two painted eyes that stared indifferently into the distance. The head had been painted red with ochre.
He knew why it was there. Indian families often put a clan totem over the door for luck. This family must have belonged to the Snake clan. He tamped down the dread that rose up in his throat, put his hand on the door post and gave it a good push before he entered the house. The structure could go down soon, but he wanted to assure himself that it wouldn’t come down on his head for the few minutes he planned to be inside.
There were so many holes and breaches in the walls and ceiling that it was almost as light inside as out. Weeds were sprouting from the holes and cracks in the rotted floorboards wherever the sun reached. There was a musky, animal smell to the place. He could see some small animal bones scattered about and a shallow hollow in the dirt near the lee side corner. Some critter had denned here recently.
Shaw walked outside and unlooped his mare’s reins from the fallen tree trunk he had secured her to. He touched his forehead to the horse’s, rubbed between her ears with his fingers, breathed into her nostrils. She responded with a whuff and a nod of approval. “He’s here, Hannah,” he murmured. “Now let’s see if I can get him to come out and face me.”
Chapter Forty-six
The Reverend Edmond’s eyes were dry, but he sagged in one of the armchairs and blew his nose into a large white handkerchief as Scott stood over him, arms crossed, waiting for the man to get hold of himself. Alafair had taken it upon herself to locate the tiny kitchen at the back of the house and put on the kettle. Fortunately, a canister of tea on the cabinet was nearly full and she was able to find a pretty, blue-flowered china tea pot without having to rummage around too much. She couldn’t come up with any proper tea cups, so ceramic mugs would have to do. Considering the situation, she didn’t care about presentation.
She was just setting a steaming mug on the side table beside the Reverend when he finally began to speak.
“Reed’s mama brought him to the Boarding School at Eufaula in nineteen and six, when he was just a little feller, maybe four or five.”
Scott lowered himself into the kitchen chair. “He wasn’t your natural son?”
“No, but we felt that he was ours, nonetheless. I never met the mama myself. She told them at the school that the boy’s father had died and she couldn’t look after him any more. The superintendent said she was a full blood Muscogee. Even so, Reed spoke English of a fluent, if ignorant, variety. He was a smart youngster. Already knew his letters and numbers. Me and my wife took to him right off. We got permission to bring him home with us for Sunday dinner a few times. My wife liked to sew little things for him. Even when he was a tyke he enjoyed cultivating a sharp appearance. It wasn’t but a little while later that the tribal government decided to turn Eufaula into a girl’s school. The plan was to move all the boys to Nuyaka, over west of Okmulgee.”
Scott nodded. “Yes, I remember when that happened, Reverend.”
“Well, Alma and I had grown quite fond of Reed and weren’t prepared to lose him. So we made shift to adopt him as our own. Unfortunately, it seems his mother dropped off the face of the earth, for we could find no trace of her nor any record of where she had gone after she left her allotment.”
Scott and Alafair exchanged a glance before Scott urged the Reverend on. “She abandoned her allotment?”
“So I gather. This is not an unheard of occurrence, as I’m sure you know, Sheriff. Many of the Creeks were loath to abandon their communal way of life, and who can blame them? Who would want to leave his clan and his village, where each supports and comforts the other, and go live in solitude with none but his wife and children and try to eke a poor living out of a small farm? My guess is that Reed’s mother joined one of the traditional bands. Maybe found herself a new man, started a new life. I’m sure she expected her half-breed boy would do better to be raised in this situation.”
“So you adopted him?”
“No, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. We did persuade the tribal court to declare us Reed’s guardians until such time as we could locate his mother. After statehood, though, tribal law was superseded and we were able to get a legal declaration of abandonment and proceeded to file for adoption. But then Ira showed up.”
Ira. The name l
inked Reverend Edmond’s story with Crying Blood’s. Scott stood up. Alafair sat down.
“Ira was his brother,” Scott said.
“Yes. He told you about Ira? We knew he had a brother. But for some reason, Ira ended up at the Creek Orphan’s Home in Okmulgee instead of here in Eufaula with Reed. Ira was some years older than Reed so he was a teenager when I first saw him. He had run away from the Orphan’s Home and come looking for Reed. He intended to steal his brother away and go live Indian. My wife felt sorry for the scamp and tried to take him in for a bit, but he was incorrigible. He made no bones about his hatred of Whites, though it was obvious that he was part White himself. He stole and lied, and told Reed the most outrageous tales. I could see the bad influence he was having, so I contacted the law in Eufaula and had him picked up as a runaway and taken back to Okmulgee.
“We didn’t hear anything of him for a couple of years after that, and I figured Reed had forgotten all about him. Though I realize now that I was fooling myself. Reed was a good boy, but he was intensely interested in his Creek heritage. I didn’t see any harm in encouraging that, as long as he maintained his Christian values and learned the superior history and culture of his European ancestors.”
The Reverend paused and took a long swallow from the mug at his elbow. He stared into its steamy depths for a moment, then heaved a sigh and continued. “I was dismayed when Ira showed up again early last year, looking for Reed. Fortunately we had sent Reed to school at Bacone just that term and he wasn’t home. Nor did I have any intention of telling Ira where he was, for Ira had reverted, had gone native in the extreme. I told him nothing but it wasn’t hard for him to discover where Reed was. Alma and I had determined to withdraw Reed from Bacone and send him back East for a while to remove him completely from his brother’s sphere. Before we could put our plans into motion, Reed disappeared.
“We were told that he had climbed out the window of his dormitory in the middle of the night with nothing more than the clothes on his back. Some of Reed’s friends said that more than once in previous days he had been seen near the perimeter of campus in clandestine conversation with a strange Indian. I’m sure Ira filled the boy’s head with romantic notions of the aboriginal life.”