by Donis Casey
“McBride bought that land so Jenny could go to school in Kansas. She’s still there, wife of a fine man. It was her told me that the preacher took in Reed. I didn’t have nowhere to go. But McBride told me he knew a good fella in Okmulgee, another old friend of Hawkins’, who would help me find a place and settle in. Doolan was real kind to me and we hit it off. That was all right with me.” She added this without looking at the man sitting next to her. “I was thinking maybe if I lived in Okmulgee I’d see Ira now and then. But he run off from the Orphan Home directly and I never did. I never knew where he went.”
Her gaze wandered off into space, and she fell silent for a moment, remembering. No one intruded on her thoughts.
Would I be willing to never see my children again if I thought it would keep them safe, Alafair wondered?
“Sheriff Tucker took me to the death house where Reed’s body is. I recognized him right off. He favored Ira a bunch.” Lucretia sighed and looked down at her hands. “If Ira hadn’t found Reed and took him back to that dark place, the ghost wouldn’t have got a look at them and they’d be alive.” She lifted her head. “Shaw, you done laid him down at last. All my menfolk’s blood, after all these years, it cried to you.”
Her tale was done. The room was so quiet that Alafair could hear Charlie on the back porch murmuring comforting words to Crook as he changed the bandages on the dog’s leg. She was aware of Martha and Mary standing discreetly back from the kitchen door, listening.
“What now, Scott?” Peter asked.
“Nothing, I guess. Barger already knows what happened out by Oktaha. The murderer is finally dead…” He turned to address Lucretia. “…which he plainly wasn’t before, ma’am. But now he is, killed in self-defense. Reed’s body can be returned to his mother. Miz Doolan, I’ll help you make whatever arrangements you want. You’re free to go back to Okmulgee any time you like.”
Lucretia and Doolan made a move to stand, but Scott put out a hand and the couple hesitated. “Hang on, Mr. Doolan.” Scott looked to his left. “Uncle Peter, do you still want to press charges on Mr. Doolan for stealing Red Allen’s stud services?”
Lucretia settled back into the settee. Doolan still had nothing to say, but the look in his steel-blue eyes sharpened as he gazed at Peter.
The two old pony soldiers leveled narrow stares at one another as Peter answered the sheriff. “In view of all that’s happened, let’s leave that for another day.”
Chapter Fifty-four
Scott and Peter had gone to take the Doolans into town, leaving Shaw in the parlor with his wife and his mother. Shaw Tucker now knew the facts of how Crying Blood’s death had come about, but his most important questions had not been answered. He knew it was unfair, but the only people with whom he felt safe enough to ask the unanswerable were these two. “If I hadn’t thought to go hunting out there just when I did would that child still be alive?”
Alafair resisted the urge to get up and throw her arms around him. “Shaw, I know that’s been on your mind since he died. But if y’all hadn’t gone out there when you did and the poor boy hadn’t followed you home, Hawkins would have killed him there in the woods and nobody would have ever known. Reed, and Ira, and Chitto, and even old Goingback, they’d of never got justice in this world.”
Shaw Tucker had a lot of Indian blood. The Tuckers were woven through with Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry from as early as anyone could remember. And the woman sitting in front of him with a speculative expression, his mother, was the daughter of a full-blood Cherokee woman. Shaw had grown up around his Cherokee relatives. He had attended the Green Corn Festival every year of his life, played in day-long stickball games, knew his clan and his kinship obligations. He even spoke passible Cherokee.
But he was raised to be White. In fact, even though he was an enrolled tribal member, he was White enough in blood and looks and way of life that the U.S. Government never bothered him. No one had ever come to take his children away and put them in boarding school. No one had ever proscribed his movements or told him where he had to live, or how. Shaw Tucker was White and he viewed the world in the way of a White man. Mostly. He was well aware of his mother’s knowledge of an existence he could barely comprehend.
“But why me, Ma?” he asked Sally.
His plaintive question caused Sally to turn away and gaze into space for a long moment. Finally she faced him. “Tell me about the snakes.”
His breath caught. “Who told you?”
Alafair’s brow crinkled. “What snakes?”
Sally shrugged before she seized Alafair’s hand and lifted it into her lap. “I have seen that you have a troubled mind, Shaw. And Alafair told me how Grace found that snake in the barn. And I noticed just now that you were mighty interested to hear that Lucretia’s son was named Chitto.”
How she had made that leap of logic he didn’t know, but this was not the first time she had seemingly plucked his secrets out of thin air. “Yes, I’ve been seeing snakes out of season,” he admitted. “I don’t know why, but I took a notion that they had something to do with all this business.”
Sally nodded. “Shaw, there are some things we’ll never know. Sounds to me like Chitto Goingback died trying to set things right for his murdered father. But he failed. And because he failed his brothers died too. Could be his spirit has been watching and waiting for years, praying for Master of Breath to help him choose the right man to finally do justice.”
Alafair was nodding unconsciously, her brown eyes glued on Sally’s face.
Shaw was a bit more skeptical about his mother’s logic. Sometimes you’ll be walking along, trip on a rock and fall on your face. Did Master of Breath choose you for that as well? Even so, her explanation made him feel better whether he entirely believed it or not. He smiled. “Mama, can I ask you a question? Right after Pa died sometimes you’d disappear. Seemed like you’d be gone for days on end. I’ve always wondered why you’d go off like that?”
Shaw was relieved to note that the question didn’t appear to cause his mother any discomfort. In fact Alafair looked more surprised than Sally. Shaw wondered if he’d ever mentioned this to her in the twenty-five years they had been together.
“Your pa died young,” Sally said, “and didn’t leave us with much. Both your pa’s family and mine did good to keep us supplied with meat and canned goods and such. But every once in a while I didn’t have a choice but to go off into Mountain Home and do a job of work to get some cash money for you children’s clothes, or salt, or nails and the like. Mostly your Tucker uncles would roust up something for me to do at the sawmill. But during the season I’d pick cotton or vegetables, or candle eggs, or anything else I could come up with.”
Shaw was dumbstruck. Why on earth had that never occurred to him? It was so logical.
“You’ve been pondering on this since your pa died?” Sally wondered. “Why didn’t you ever ask?”
“I don’t know. I guess when you’re a little kid you just know how things are and never think to wonder why. I always felt sorry for Josie having to wrangle us savages like she did.”
Sally nodded. “Your sister Josie had to grow up in a hurry.”
“Now, how old was Josie when this happened?” Alafair asked. “Eleven, twelve?”
“She was almost twelve,” Sally told her. “Not much older than Blanche.”
All these years. I thought Ma was so wrapped up in her grief that she left her children to struggle on her own. Instead, I was so wrapped up in mine that I didn’t see the sacrifices she was making for us. His cheeks felt hot. The things we get in our heads that affect the rest of our lives!
Alafair brought him out of his reverie. “You’d best start being nicer to Josie from now on.” She wasn’t entirely teasing.
Chapter Fifty-five
The whole family turned out to see Grandma Sally off when she finally left for home, everyone standing in the front yard and waving at her buggy until it disappeared into the distance.
When the dust had sett
led and Martha had ushered most of the children back into the house, Alafair took Shaw’s arm and glanced at Gee Dub. He had leaned his long frame against the picket fence and crossed his arms, making no move to go inside with his siblings. “Come on then, both of you,” she said, “and get cleaned up for dinner. Gee, you look like the bottom of a rat hole and you’re not too fragrant, either.”
“We’re both mighty hollow, too,” Shaw admitted, “after a couple of days of my camp cooking.”
Gee Dub peeled himself away from the fence. “We’ll be along, Mama. I want to talk to Dad for a minute.”
Alafair’s first reflex was to shoo him inside like a goose, but she caught herself in time. “Hurry it up, then,” she said, and left them alone on the walk.
Gee Dub had watched in silence the entire time that Lucretia was telling her tale and had yet to offer an observation. Shaw was curious. “What is it, son?”
“Dad, did you believe that woman’s story about Hawkins and Chitto killing each other?”
Shaw’s mustache twitched, a sign that he was surprised by the question. “I believe that she believes it. I think Hawkins probably killed Chitto, but it’s plain that Chitto didn’t quite finish off his stepdaddy. I’m guessing that Hawkins eventually crawled out from under the grave of rocks and dirt Ira buried him in with his brains all scrambled and set about making mischief for the next ten years. Whatever sort of critter I shot, it wasn’t a ghost. You have a different idea?”
“Well, something’s been eating at me. You remember the last thing Hawkins said?”
Shaw grimaced. “I don’t care to reminisce about the occasion.”
Gee Dub nodded absently, barely letting his father finish in his eagerness to say what was on his mind. “I expect not. But I heard him. He said, ‘…tell her that’s what she gets.’ What do you think he meant by…?
Shaw cut him off. “I don’t know what he meant, Gee. You saw what he had become. I doubt he knew what he was saying.” He put his hand on Gee Dub’s shoulder. “Remember what your grandma said, son. There are some things we’ll never know.”
Chapter Fifty-six
Shaw made his way alone across the cemetery to stand beside the newly filled graves. The rest of the members of the funeral party were still in the basement of the little Creek Methodist Church helping themselves to the barbeque feast that the ladies of the congregation had provided.
Since she had become Lucy Doolan, Lucretia had acquired quite a circle of friends, Shaw thought. He was sorry that life hadn’t worked out as well for her sons.
When he had finally managed to slip away from the crowd, Shaw had been aware of Alafair’s eyes on him. But she hadn’t tried to follow or to ask him what was on his mind.
He stared down at the two mounds of raw earth. During the funeral, Crying Blood—Reed, he supposed he should call him—had rested in his open coffin. A very young Creek man at perfect peace, dressed in a new tunic with his medicine bundle under his folded hands and his snake vertebrae necklace peeping out from under his collar, sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Shaw imagined that their mother had provided similarly for Chitto, but his coffin had been nailed shut over his bones.
Where the third brother, Ira, reposed, no one knew. Reed had never had the chance to tell where Ira had met his end at his own father’s hands. Shaw expected he lay with his people in some Indian burial ground deep in the Kiamichi or Winding Stair Mountains.
He squatted down beside the near grave. “Go on now, Chitto,” he said. “Take your brother and go on home. We did the best we could do.”
Shaw scooped a shallow hole in the soft earth and returned Chitto’s snake bone necklace to him, to protect him on the journey.
Chapter Fifty-seven
January 1916
The new year was off to a wet start. It had been raining in earnest for days, but today the heavy clouds only spit a light, intermittent drizzle. It was cold as sin, and muddy, but Shaw seized whatever slim window he could to do some fence mending. Oklahoma was hard on wooden structures, soaking them with rain, freezing them in thick coats of ice, steam-heating them in the summer humidity and always, always, blowing at them from one direction or another. Sometimes all directions at once. Riding fence around his paddocks and fields was an unending chore. The truth was, though, that fence mending was one job that Shaw didn’t mind.
Occasionally he rode the perimeter with a son or a hired hand, especially around the larger fields. But today he was working on one of the paddocks next to the stables, maybe a quarter acre square. A job perfectly suited to doing alone.
He loved the sheer physicality of lifting rails and nailing them back in place, or pulling off and replacing rotten boards. Even digging post holes or wrenching out broken posts gave him an opportunity to use his muscles, to enjoy the feeling of strength and warmth in his back and biceps. And when he was done he would know that he had accomplished a real and useful task.
He could see his breath in the frosty air as he hammered a top rail, his hands encased in leather gauntlets that covered his forearms half-way to his elbows. There had been a front come in last evening with a big wind and lots of rails were down. His chaps and boots were covered with mud, wet grass, and wood splinters. He had draped his coat over his saddle horn since the exercise made him warm in spite of the weather. Ironically his mustache was stiff with ice and his nose felt like it was going to freeze into a solid ice cube and shatter right off his face. His black mare, Hannah, was standing behind him, alternately trying to graze what soggy, trampled, winter-yellowed grass she could find and nibbling at the wooden handle of the pliers Shaw had stuck in the back pocket of his Levis. Shaw waved his hand behind himself in an attempt to swat her away.
“Dang it, gal, either quit nipping at my rear end or haul them pliers out and twist some wire around this rail.”
Hannah snorted and moved away long enough for Shaw to lift the rail to the top of the post and hammer a couple of ten-penny nails into the top. He was just standing back to inspect his work when he heard a high-pitched call in the distance. Alafair calling the family for dinner. Over the years she had developed her own peculiar method of long-distance calling that served as well as any dinner bell, a sort of yoo-hoo which had eventually transformed into in an upper register ooo-eee that could be heard from anywhere on the farm. It reminded Shaw of a hog call, which he thought was probably appropriate. In his mind the sound was so associated with food that his mouth watered when he heard it.
He had seen Alafair scrubbing sweet potatoes earlier. He hoped that she had baked them whole in their jackets. There was nothing he loved better than to peel a warm sweet potato and slather it with butter.
He packed up his tools into his saddle bag before he mounted up and rode back to the house. Kurt Lukenbach was walking up the path toward the kitchen and they met in the yard. Shaw had barely swung down out of the saddle before Grace came crashing out of the back door. He lifted her into his arms and she ran her hand over his stubbly face.
“Daddy! Buttercup had her puppies!”
“Did she now?”
Dark-haired, emerald-eyed Blanche and dimpled Sophronia with her auburn pigtails followed their little sister down the steps. Sophronia threw her arms around Shaw’s waist and Blanche tugged at his hand. “There’s five of them, Daddy. Come and see!”
Shaw laughed and looked up at Alafair, standing at the back screen wiping her hands on her apron tail. This was not an unexpected event. It had become clear last fall, not long after Buttercup’s parole, that her incarceration had come too late.
“There’s a few minutes before I get dinner on the table,” Alafair said. “I’ll get Charlie to put the nose bag on your horse if you want to go have a look.”
Shaw walked out to the barn, his three skipping little girls in front of him and Kurt and Charlie Dog trotting behind. Buttercup had been ensconced in the empty stall where Crying Blood had died. The stall had been scrubbed with lye water and Alafair had well removed any lingering aura of death
with raw eggs and plenty of sage and cedar smoke. Buttercup seemed happy there and so did Crook, who rose from his place near the stall gate and greeted them with a wagging tail. His broken leg had healed well and he seemed to have suffered no permanent damage from the wound. Shaw knelt down at Buttercup’s straw-filled nursery crate and rubbed her head. Grace squatted down next to her father’s elbow and leaned in so close that Buttercup snuffled at the child’s ear and made her laugh.
Shaw laughed too when he got his first look at Buttercup’s babies. Four beautifully marked, pure-bred little coon hounds, and one yellow, flop-eared little mongrel. “Charlie Dog, you scamp!”
The old yellow shepherd cocked his head when Shaw said his name. His fluffy tail waved in the air a couple of times.
“John Lee wants one of the hunters, Daddy,” Blanche informed him.
“He can have his pick. As for the rest, I can always sell a good hunting hound. But what am I going to do with a little half-breed mutt?”
“I’ll take him.”
Shaw looked back over his shoulder. He had forgotten Kurt was there. Kurt grinned. “After we wed, me and Mary will need a good-hearted dog at our new place.”
“All right, then!” Shaw stood up and brushed his hands together. “Now, girls, did Mama bake sweet potatoes for dinner?”
“Ham and red-eye gravy, Daddy,” Sophronia told him. “And creamed corn and biscuits.”
Grace jumped up and down. “And sweet potatoes, too!”
“Well, then, sounds like everything is just like it ought to be. Let’s go eat.”
Indian Territory
1905
The hunter’s bullet slammed into the man’s leg and the gun in his hand went flying. He howled with pain and crumpled over. He scrambled around in the dirt, trying to dig himself into the ground like a badger to escape his terror, pain, and the sight of his own blood pouring down the front of his shirt from his missing ear.