I focused my attention away from them. The scalps they had brought home now hung from the tops of long poles set in a tripod, and, except for the braid, the hair waved in the breeze. On the other side of the river, the great herd of horses grazed, peacefully bending their necks toward the grass in a lush meadow. The tipis were plain but beautiful. The sun hitting some made them seem as though they glowed. The two children who had been given my hat and my little noose were now chasing each other, fighting over their toys. A pack of dogs roamed between the lodges, and one wandered over to me, sniffed at the kindling piled at my feet, then lifted his leg and urinated.
I caught the eye of one of the women laying on sticks of firewood. She was young and pregnant. She smiled at me, and laid her sticks at my feet, and went to get more.
There was a great pile of tinder surrounding me now. One woman made gestures to me, telling me with her fingers flickering upward like fire, what they had planned. As if I had not already guessed. It would be painful. It would be very painful, but it would soon be over. My life would end here. We would see if I could keep my stoicism once the flames were leaping up my legs. For now I showed no expression. Another woman brought a burning stick. She jabbed it toward the kindling at my feet but she did not let it touch. I thought that once dead, there would be nothing anyone could do to hurt me again. I thought of Mo’s last breath, of the way his voice had changed. “Sweetheart,” he had said. If ever there was a time to believe in God in heaven, in being reunited with Chloe, then this was it. If heaven was true, and if I was going there, then I would welcome seeing her again.
The woman with the burning stick laughed and danced and jabbed its flame at me, but still I gave no response. I looked at her impassively, and she jabbed again, passing the flame quickly across my legs. I felt its heat and showed nothing. A great cry went up among the women, and one of them ran over to the men, jabbering and pointing to me. They came and gathered around me, and looked me over. The woman with the burning stick jabbed it again toward the tinder.
It is odd to think of it now. I had, at this point, given up on everything. I did not even feel the need to talk to myself about dying, about being brave and showing no fear. I felt as if I had perhaps already left my body. The movements of the villagers in front of me did not seem to be happening in a time in which I now lived. They were as if wading through water. The sounds—the women’s excited cries, their jabbering, the call of a hawk above us, the conversations of the men in the language I did not understand—it all curled around me as if it were wind coming around the corner of my mind. I thought of Mo and Sedge, of Henry and Sup, of my mother and father and sister. I thought again of Chloe, of the first time I had seen her on the trader’s display-room floor, of Master Wilson telling her to unbutton the bodice of her dress that he might examine his future property. I thought of her leaning against me in the barn at Lidgewood. I thought of the first time she came to me in my cabin, our falling together onto my pallet, the fire guttering in the hearth, the way the shadows flickered against her skin. I thought again of Mo calling for Geraldine before he died, of his hand curling around something. Behind me I felt my fingers close around Chloe’s hand, for I imagined it there, her hand in my own, her breath on my neck.
It was just then that another raiding party entered the village with more horses and scalps and another captive. The villagers left me there, tied to the post, and surrounded these men. The women made their excited noises. The men yelped and whooped. The braves who had just come in dismounted, and the women pulled the captive from his horse and beat him just as I had been beaten. I watched him roll on the ground, holding his hands and arms to his face. I heard him scream as the braves feinted at him with their spears. I saw two more scalps tied to poles. The hair rippled in the breeze, and I thought of Chloe’s hair.
The captured horses were led away, and the captive was pulled to his feet and brought over to the pole where I was tied. He was dirty, thin and bearded, naked like me, a white man. The Indians kicked some of the kindling aside and tied him behind me and then pushed the tinder around his feet. I am going to die tied to a white man, I thought. And then I heard something. My name. “Persy?” the man was saying. “Persy? Is that you?”
I twisted my head. I could not see him of course.
“Persy?” I thought he said again. “From Sweetmore? It’s me, Holmes.”
I laughed. My mind was playing tricks on me. The image of the women swam in front of me as they piled more wood around our feet. I thought of the river. How peaceful it had been to give in to it. I thought of the dough bowl, I thought of it as Chloe’s dough bowl, floating along in that big wide river and bumping into me.
Biscuits. Pies. All kinds. Blueberry, peach, apple. With crusts all buttery and flaky.
Chloe. Chloe.
My fingers could no longer curl into her hand, for I was wedged up against this man now. And then the voice spoke my name again. “Persy?” it said. “Isn’t that you, Persy? From Sweetmore? It’s me, Holmes. We worked together.”
I twisted my head again. By my peripheral vision I could see the man’s wrists and forearms and muscles fighting and coiling against the restraints. Holmes? My mind was surely gone to have conjured up Holmes with whom to die. I laughed again when the woman with the burning stick returned.
“Persy,” the man said again. “Get me out of here.”
And then I heard my laughter cease and my voice say, “Show them no fear.”
“What?”
“Show no fear. They admire bravery,” I told the white man.
“Ha. Is that why you’re here, about to be burned alive? For being brave?”
“Die your own way,” I answered.
The woman pushed the flaming stick toward the kindling, and neither of us made a sound. She poked the stick closer, and then she prodded it into the tinder, once on each side, so that a thin blue plume of smoke began to rise at my feet, and another at the feet of the man behind me.
I heard the slight crackle of fire. I felt the heat against my toes. The Indians fell back away from us and watched, and then the Indian who had captured me started to argue and laugh with another. I could now see the fire, bright and orange, licking its way toward me. It climbed up my calf, and I fought against the pain, and then suddenly my Indian walked over and kicked the fire away, and we were cut off the pole and led away in different directions.
I was taken to a tipi where I was given a breechcloth and a blue wool shirt, as well as food and water. A bed was made for me of a pad of grass and thick buffalo robes and I fell into it, too exhausted to let the uncertainty of my situation keep me awake. I did not even know, until the next morning, that there were others, who had come later in the night, sleeping in the tipi with me: my Indian, two women, and three children.
I was given food again, and more water, and I was led to the stream, where I bathed and soothed the burn on my leg. The Indian I was with, the man who seemingly owned the lodge I had stayed in, came to me and said something and looked at my leg. He grunted and splashed more cold water on the burn and said more that I could not grasp.
Back in the tipi I was clothed again, this time in buckskin britches. Every hair on my face was pulled out with a pair of bone tweezers, and this was as much torture as I had yet endured. Then my hair was cut with a knife, and two white streaks were painted across my cheeks, and I was led to an open area, and I saw that from the opposite side the man I had been tied to was being led here also, and that his facial hair was also gone, and that he was dressed as I was, and that it was indeed Holmes.
A crowd gathered around us, and my Indian pushed me into the arena while across the way Holmes was also pushed. We stood there, just staring at each other, and then Holmes said, “I think we’re supposed to fight.”
“All right, then,” I answered.
“Persy,” he said, “we can escape. We can fake the fight.”
The Indians yelled at us, and one of them came over and slapped Holmes. Then he grabbed Holmes
by the arm, and motioned toward me and frowned, nodding his head at me again. I did not wait for Holmes to make the first move, for fight each other we must, and truth be told, I had no qualms about it. I fell on him. I fought him with all my might, for here before me was Holmes, and while it was not Master Wilson, he would have to do, wouldn’t he, as the white man I would kill before I died?
Perhaps, though, I had already killed a white man, for I could never be certain during the war if I hit what I aimed for. But here, in this battle, there would be no question.
Yes, I killed him, and you may add that to your list of charges against me, although I do not believe it necessary at this point. He fought hard. It took some time. He muttered to me at one point that he did not mind killing a nigger, and I told him that I did not mind killing a white man, and there we were, scrabbling against each other, first one and then the other on top.
Around us the Indians yelled and jeered. Those who had bet on Holmes shouted and pumped their arms whenever he got me down, and those who had bet on me did the same whenever I got him down. I do not know how long the battle went on, but I remember my toes digging into the earth as I held him down, and I remember him getting his hands around my throat and squeezing the breath out of me until I got my thumbs into his eyeballs and pressed in so that he let me loose. And I remember that he rammed his fist into my face and knocked me down and began kicking me and that I then grabbed his leg and pulled him down with me. Blood ran out of my nose. We rolled in the dirt. He bit me on my shoulder and held on with his teeth until I tore loose from him, and then he spat a chunk of my flesh out of his mouth before continuing on.
It was meant to be a fight to the death, and it was. I felt life leave his body as I pounded his head against the earth, yet I kept on pounding. And then a last puff of dust rose up from beneath him as I let him drop.
The Indians quieted. I got off him and slumped onto the ground with my head between my knees. A brave came into the arena and pushed at Holmes with his foot. Then he shook his head and the Indians who had bet on me gave up a great cheer, and I watched as another man stepped into the arena, and picked up Holmes’s head by his hair, and ran a knife around his skull. I heard the pop his scalp made as it let loose. The brave handed me the bloody scalp and I took it.
I took it, not because I was proud of what I had done, although I was not ashamed. I took it, not because I considered it a trophy, although that would come later. I took it simply because it was handed to me, and because I was tired, and because I was among people who held my life in their hands.
The Indians let out a great roar when I accepted the scalp, and then a teenage boy stepped into the arena and dragged Holmes away by his feet, his head leaving a bloody furrow in the dirt.
In spite of what is said about me, I am not an insensitive man. I know that my search for Chloe after the war was just one among many searches for loved ones. I know that families were never reunited, that husbands and fathers and brothers never came home. I know that men and women disappeared into the frontier, their fates unknown. I helped, sometimes, to make this happen.
But I have not forgotten what it is to scour the land looking for someone, and even if that person is dead, to want to know the truth about that death and where or if she is buried. So I will tell you, in the event some relative is looking to learn the fate of an uncle or a father or a brother or a son, and thinking that perhaps the man I killed is he, I will tell you now that I never knew his full name, nor that he had any family, and I do not know from where he was captured. I only knew this man as Holmes, one of Master Joseph Wilson’s overseers on Sweetmore Plantation, Saint James Parish, Louisiana.
THE WHITE BOY who had fired the pistol at me led me back to the tipi. He pried my fingers loose from their grasp in Holmes’s hair and said things in the Comanche language I could not understand. I nodded, thinking he was telling me that the scalp was not mine to keep, hoping he was saying this, for I did not want it. The boy also nodded, as if we understood each other. He set the scalp aside, and then he cleaned my wounds with a wet cloth and spread salve across the tear in my shoulder and the burn along my leg. I tried to speak with him. “Where are you from? What is your name? How long have you been with the Indians? What do they have planned for me now?” He looked at me strangely and shook his head. If he had ever known my language, he did not know it now.
Before he left the tipi, he set beside me a bladder of water and a bit of food, strips of dried meat and hardtack. I lay back on the bed of buffalo robes. Outside I could hear the movement of the camp: the hooves of horses, the occasional growling fights of dogs, the strange language. The top of the tipi walls glowed red with the fiery slip of the sun and then faded to pink and amber. The flap opened and a young woman stepped in. She nodded to me and built up the fire in the middle of the floor. She saw that I had not eaten the food, and pushed it toward me with the toe of her moccasin, nodding and saying, “Tuhkuh. Tuhkuh.”
Her meaning was clear. “Eat.”
I thought that perhaps the food was poisoned, for even though I had eaten the food offered the night before, and even though the boy who had tended my wounds had been tender with me, and this young woman seemed genuinely concerned, I had seen enough already to believe, now that my fight with Holmes was over, that I was of no value to these people.
She pushed at the food again, and then she sat down on the buffalo robe beside me and picked up the strip of meat. She took a bite out of it, chewed and swallowed, then handed it to me and I took it. She did the same with the hardtack, and I took that too. She nodded and stood, and then reached into a fold in her dress and held out her open palm to me. In it was the little noose. I took it from her, and she nodded again and opened the flap to the tipi and stepped out into the night. I never did get my hat back.
Outside I heard gunfire close by and the squeal of mules. I lay listening, wondering if soldiers had come, and if I would be rescued. Then, just as quickly, the thought crossed my mind that I might be arrested for the death of Holmes. But there were no more gunshots, and I know now that the tribe was slaughtering a few mules in their herd in order to have something to eat.
This was the year of 1868, and there was a shortage of food among the tribes. I did not know this as I ate the food that had been left for me. I then lay back on the buffalo robes and slept. It was still night when I woke.
Someone had tended the fire in the tipi, and it crackled cozily and made shadows on the walls and the smoke drifted up in a twisting column to the vent in the top. Light from a larger fire outside flickered against the upper walls, and against this light huge shadows occasionally loomed and glided as a person outside crossed by.
I felt something in my hand and opened my palm to see the little noose the woman had returned to me. I had no place to put it. The buckskins I had been given to wear had no pockets. Mo’s haversack was gone. I untied the rawhide strip from my neck and strung the little noose next to Chloe’s button. My shoulder, where Holmes had taken his bite of me, throbbed as I did so.
It took some time for me to decide that I should step outside the tipi and meet whatever fate the Indians had in store for me. There seemed to be no escaping it. There was nothing I could do for myself. I had no horse, and no gun. Chloe was dead and I thought that I might as well also be dead. I no longer even cared about showing bravery. I would scream and cry if I wanted, and then, once my breath had left my body, I would scream and cry no longer.
I rose and opened the tipi flap and stepped out into the night. There was a large fire off to my right, and many Indians were gathered around it. I smelt the roasted meat, and in spite of my bravado and determination to die, my stomach growled so loudly that it caused a brave walking by to laugh. He took my arm and led me to the fire and a place was made for me between two men. I was handed a bone full of meat. I took it. I fell into it, gnawing and chewing and swallowing all in one motion. It did not occur to me until later that this was one of Mo’s mules.
The Indian beside m
e smiled and patted me on the back. They continued their talk. The strange words rose and fell around me. Their language sounded like stars would sound, but also like chunks of lard, and the wind in trees, and arrows zinging through the air. I could make no sense of it.
The white boy who had tended my wounds was across from me, with a group of boys around his age. They chattered and laughed and roughhoused. Among them were two more white boys, and across from me was a white man, and to my right a white woman nursed an infant. Captives. Captives turned savage.
I finished eating and continued to sit there. I wondered if I was still being held. It did not seem like it. I stood and grabbed my crotch, indicating to the man next to me that I needed to go relieve myself. He nodded. The fellow to my other side raised his arm and shooed me away, as if I had no need to explain myself. I walked a little ways off from the firelight and the camp and did my business.
When I turned back they were paying me no attention. They were eating, talking, and laughing. I took a few steps back from them and they ignored me. And a few steps again. I squatted there in the shadows, watching the firelight flicker on their faces, listening to their laughter and conversation.
The moon was full and high. I had no doubt that they could see me if they wanted to. I sat there ten minutes, twenty minutes and still they paid me no mind. The two men I had been sitting between shifted closer to each other, closing the gap where I had once been, and I understood in that moment that I was free to go if I wished. I stood and walked away toward the herd of horses and then I turned to look at them again.
The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson Page 24