by Lisa Wingate
“You shouldn’t.” I was only halfway focused on the painted scene of a stream winding through a village of traditional Choctaw round houses with cone-shaped thatch roofs. “It’s beautiful. It’s really good.” Studying the painting, I tried not to dwell on the fact that my tour with Shasta had blown two huge holes in my plans. I’d learned that there was no branch of my bank in tiny Clayton, or anywhere around that Shasta knew of, and that the county courthouse was forty-five miles away. “The courthouse is a lot farther away than I thought,” I admitted, raising my wrist to check my watch, then realizing I didn’t have a watch. “I thought it was nearby.”
“Guess I should have explained that earlier,” Shasta said apologetically. “We don’t think anything of making that drive. Around here, you drive to do pretty much anything. We’re just used to it.”
Leaning in the car window, I glanced at the clock. It was already nine thirty. “I guess I have time to make it down there and back,” I said, thinking that I was supposed to meet Jace at twelve thirty. But there was still the problem of money. Getting birth records copied at the courthouse would undoubtedly cost a few dollars, and I had almost no money left. What if they wouldn’t take an out-of-state check? “I really need to cash a check somewhere before I go.”
“Oh.” Shasta chewed her bottom lip. “I’d do it for you, but Cody and I never have any money in our account. Hmmm…My friend Kristin works down at the dollar store. She’ll cash a check for us.” Giving the mural one last disgusted sneer, she started down the street with her hair swinging from side to side like a length of silky black cloth.
I jogged after her, catching up as she pulled open a door and walked into an old-fashioned five-and-dime like she owned the place. I waited a discreet distance away while she cornered the girl behind the counter, a stocky redhead with braces and curly hair. It quickly became clear that the clerk was concerned about cashing a check. Shasta gave her a sales pitch. “Come on, Kristin. It’s not that big a deal.”
Kristin’s pert nose wrinkled like a rabbit’s, her eyes darting nervously my way. Shoving her hands into her store apron pockets, she jingled something, then finally pulled out her keys and opened the antique cash register. Shasta waved me over, slipping her arm around me when I got there. “They’re not really supposed to give cash anymore, but she said she’ll do it, since you’re my cousin.” Laying her head on my shoulder, she pasted on a huge smile for Kristin’s benefit.
Kristin studied us. “Y’all do look a lot alike.”
“We all look alike to white folks,” Shasta quipped, and I blinked in surprise.
Kristin smirked and rolled her eyes. “Shasta, you’re so bad.”
“I know.” Snatching a pack of gum from the rack on the counter, Shasta tossed it toward the cash register. “Kristin can only do it for thirty over, and you have to buy something.” She stepped back and motioned to the counter. “You can buy me some gum.”
“Sure.” Pulling out my checkbook, I started writing the check while Kristin punched numbers into the cash register and gave me a total. She frowned at the check when I handed it to her.
Shasta scooped up our purchase and ripped the top off the package. “Don’t worry. The check’s good.” She popped a piece of gum in her mouth, then wadded up the foil wrapper and tossed it into the trash. “It’s not one of mine.”
Kristin’s nose scrunched up so that her eyes slanted upward. “If it was your check, I wouldn’t of cashed it.” After taking the money from the drawer, she counted it slowly into my hand.
Shasta clicked her teeth petulantly. “I haven’t bounced a check in, like, six months.”
“Uh-huh.” Kristin closed the cash register door and braced her hands on the counter, tilting her head skeptically.
“Well, if Cody would write down when he goes to the ATM, it would help. In fact, if he’d stay away from that thing, we wouldn’t be so broke.”
A puff of air whistled past Kristin’s braces. “Huh! If I got all the stuff you guys get from the tribe, I’d never be broke.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Shasta headed for the door with an exaggerated swagger. “You poor lily-white thing. You just wish you had my kinda tan.”
“Brat,” Kristin called after her.
“Paleface.” Yanking open the door, Shasta grinned over her shoulder, then stuck her nose in the air and disappeared onto the sidewalk.
I stood at the counter with my cash still in my hand, unable to put my embarrassment into words. “Thanks,” I said. “The check really is good.”
“You’re welcome.” Her lips squeezed shut over the braces. “You’re way too nice to be hanging out with Shas.”
I just smiled, thanked her again, and headed for the door.
Shasta was waiting out on the street. “Mission accomplished,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Guess you’d better take me over to the festival grounds before Mama has a coronary.”
“Sure.” I finally had some money in my pocket, but so far today, I was a long way from mission accomplished. The courthouse was forty-five miles away, and my nearest potential bank or check-cashing store was probably farther than that. I would definitely be camping out with bottled water and a mooched blanket again tonight, but the possibility didn’t seem so bad. Camp Reid was starting to feel like home, and the Reids like family. “Thanks for helping me get some cash,” I said as Shasta and I climbed into my car. “The check really is good. She won’t have any problem with it.”
“Oh, I know.” Shrugging casually, Shasta twisted a long strand of hair around her finger. “You’re one of those serious, got-it-together girls who balances her checkbook. I can tell by looking.” It was hard to say whether that was a complaint or a compliment.
Putting the car in gear, I pulled onto the street, then rounded the block, passing another of Shasta’s murals, a painting of a riderless war pony standing atop a hill, gazing forlornly into the distance. The eyes were so lifelike that I wondered what the horse was thinking.
“So what’s Europe like?” Shasta asked, the words dreamy and far away.
I considered the question for a moment. Not so different from here, I thought. Older. Europe had an ancientness that nothing in the States could match, but beyond the architecture, people went about all the normal patterns of life—work, school, home, love, hate, politics. In some ways, Europe was very much like home . “It’s beautiful, especially Switzerland. You can’t imagine the Alps until you’ve been there.”
I spent the next few minutes giving Shasta a verbal tour of Europe as we crossed the street and then drove a few miles to the Choctaw capitol grounds at Tuskahoma. She listened to my description of a castle in Germany where the youth symphony had given a performance in the garden. A blond-haired tour guide had flirted with me in broken English, but I left out that part of the story.
“It sounds incredible.” Breathing deeply, Shasta closed her eyes and rubbed a hand over her stomach. Through the T-shirt fabric, I saw the baby move. “I’d like to go there someday.”
“Maybe you will,” I said as we rounded a corner and the festival grounds came into view ahead. The place was alive with activity. Lines of vehicles waited to pull into fields that served as parking areas. Tourists clambered from their cars, pulling wagons and pushing baby strollers toward rows of vendors’ booths housed in long open-air metal buildings. Near the craft area, a banner advertised gospel and country-music concerts in a huge hillside amphitheater. Twangy rhythms floated among the din of voices, the electronic whirl and whiz of carnival rides, and the metallic ping of bats and balls from the softball fields near the parking lot. In the center of the grounds, the old Choctaw Capitol Building towered like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, its classic sandstone archways and three-story red-brick walls out of keeping with the tiny village of traditional Choctaw round houses across the road. Rhythmic bits of Choctaw language drifted in the window as we passed the village, where tribe members in historic dress reenacted scenes from an ancient way of life. On the fringes of
the grounds, RVs, tents, and modern-day tepees were crowded into camping areas, so that the whole event took on the aura of a giant family reunion, like the Reids’ campout, but larger.
“I had no idea there was so much here,” I admitted as we stopped behind a line of cars entering the parking lot.
Sighing, Shasta opened her eyes. “Choctaw Labor Day Festival’s a big deal,” she said, then motioned out the front window. “Pull into the vendor parking. It’ll be easier to let me out there. When you come back, you’ll have to park out in the big parking area, but later on in the day, you can usually find some spaces up front. Things won’t get crowded again until evening when the powwow and the big concerts start.” Shasta pulled a vendor pass from her purse and held it up for the parking attendant, who waved us around the line of cars and into a vendor lot.
“This place is amazing,” I said as I pulled into a parking space.
“Not compared to castles in Europe, I bet.” Shasta sounded unusually melancholy. She opened the door and she pulled herself out of the seat, then leaned back in, pointing toward the festival grounds. “Our booth is down that way, on the row by the stage. It’s the one with the striped red flag on top. You can just barely see it from here.”
I put the car in park and unbuckled my seat belt, then stood on the doorframe and tried to spot Shasta’s flag in the village of metal roofing and plastic tarps.
“Right next to the tepee with the horses on it.” Shasta pointed. “That’s my uncle Randal’s. He sells belts and stuff made from braided horsehair.”
“Oh, I see it.” The miniature tepee secured atop one of the craft buildings was hard to miss, even in such a crowded setting.
“Okay, then, see you later.” A group of guys approached, headed toward the softball fields, and Shasta checked them out covertly, tucking a few stray strands behind her ear. “We’ll be here all day.”
“See you later.” Sliding back into the car, I noticed Benjamin’s baby seat in the back. “Do you want me to carry the baby seat over to the booth for you?”
Shasta flashed the softball players a flirty look, then shook her head and turned away, as if she’d caught herself in an old habit. “No, that’s all right. You’re coming back. I’ll get it then. Oh, hey, I’ll call my stepcousin at the courthouse and tell her to look out for you. She’s kind of…uhhh…chubby, with blond hair. Real sweet. You’ll know her if you meet her.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering how I’d gotten so lucky as to have Shasta on my side. Between her faith, her knowledge of the area, and her connections, the day was looking pretty promising.
I watched her walk away, then sat for a moment taking in the festival. Gazing up at the capitol, its imposing shadow falling from three stories overhead, I had the sense of being part of something large and powerful, with a long history that reached back hundreds of years, like the lineages in Europe. There was so much more to my father’s heritage, to my heritage, than I’d ever considered.
I pondered the idea as I left town and headed toward the courthouse in Antlers, winding my way through the Kiamichi Mountains on the thin ribbon of highway. Oak and sweet gum trees arched over the road, the sunlight dappling their leaves. I had a sense of being far from all my normal reference points. The peaceful day outside and the earthy stillness of the hills ran in stark contrast to the turmoil in my head. Questions rushed through my mind like race cars on a track, zipping past in a blur of noise and emotion, only to come around again and again.
Who was my father? How did he feel about being part of the tribe? Did he grow up in these hills, a little boy with dark hair and sienna skin, darting through the carpet of last year’s leaves on quick, silent feet, climbing nests of enormous boulders searching for hidden treasure, or shinnying up the gnarled oak trees to see into the distance? Did he grow up here, go to school, play football, do all the normal things? Did he drive this very road, travel it so many times that he knew each curve, each rise and fall of ground, the time of day the shadow of the hills blanketed the highway and how they changed with the seasons?
Did he speak Choctaw like Nana Jo’s children and grandchildren? Was there a grandmother who taught him about the code talkers and the Trail of Tears? Did he know his history? Was he rooted here like one of these ancient trees?
Did he bring my mother here? Did they drive along this very road together, her body round and swollen like Shasta’s? She would have been younger than Shasta, just a teenager, a pregnant high school dropout, running away from home.
Was she afraid when she felt me move and stretch inside her? Did she wonder who I would be, or was she indifferent, so deep in a haze of drugs that she didn’t think about me at all?
Did my father see flutters of movement beneath her shirt the way I saw Shasta’s baby move? Did he lay his hand on her stomach and say, Don’t worry, Jesse, I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you both….
Did they ever talk about me at all?
How had I come to be?
What if the answers were worse than the questions?
The whirling stopped in my mind, and that single thought flashed again, words against a blank screen in a theater with the house lights turned low to block out everything else. All my life, people had been trying to keep the truth from me—Mama, Granny, my CPS caseworker, James and Karen, even Grandma Rose. I’d asked her once if she knew who my father was. She’d always lived across the river from Granny’s house, and in a small town, people talk. But when I brought up the question, Grandma Rose only paused momentarily in weeding her flower bed. She patted my hand, leaving little crystals of fresh earth, and said, Oh, honey, sometimes the past is best left where it is. You’re God’s child. That’s what matters….
Combing a hand through my hair, I sat with my elbow braced on the window frame, thinking. Outside, a road sign with bullet dings in it zipped by: EED ZONE AHEAD. Someone had shot out the SP. Probably kids, drunk and wild on a Saturday night, desperate to manufacture fun in a place where the entertainment was limited to shooting at road signs, bashing mailboxes, and toilet papering the principal’s yard.
I pictured my father doing those things.
Only a few more miles to the county seat. When I got there, I would be near the interstate. I could pull onto the entrance ramp, head north, and just keep driving. Go home to my bedroom, with the antique four-poster bed and the fan overhead making its lazy effort to push air from the vaulted ceiling. I could sleep in my own room tonight, with James and Karen down the hall. Sometime in the wee hours, Roxie and Felix, our overweight tabby cats, would slink in and curl up on either side of my face.
I could leave Shasta’s baby seat with someone at the courthouse in Antlers, maybe even find a local who was headed to the festival and would take it to her. I could go home, and no one would ever have to know where I’d been, how close I’d come to screwing up everything…
And then what?
Then. What.
I couldn’t answer that one simple question. The answer was somewhere on the other side of a lake so big, and black, and thick that there was no way across. The only path around, the only path I could see, led through the past. You can wish all day long that you felt differently, Grandma Rose used to say, but the heart doesn’t turn on wishes. Generally, a change of heart requires action.
There was nothing to do but continue on the path I’d started when I left Kansas City. Was that only yesterday? It seemed like a week. Now here I was, headed for the courthouse, where Shasta was sure I would find clues to my father’s identity and the circumstances of my birth. Could it really be that easy? Was it possible that all these years the answers had been here, just waiting for me to have the courage to ask the questions?
I wound through the county seat, a town slightly larger than Clayton, but still small. Signs directed me to the county courthouse. I turned the corner, and suddenly there it was, a two-story white building with stark art deco architecture. Out front, the Kiamichi Garden Club members were planting a flower bed. I recogni
zed them from my encounter at the mini-mart the day before. Today, they were putting in pansies by the courthouse entrance. Cecil, the one who’d given me directions at the convenience store, set down a flat of plants, braced her hands on her back, and stretched. “Well, hi there!” She squinted at me and waved a soiled green-and-pink garden glove as I climbed out of my car. “Did ya find your way yesterday?”
I was surprised she remembered. “I did, thanks.”
“They have any cabins open at the Four Winds?”
I wanted to tell her that I apparently wasn’t the right kind of customer for the Four Winds. “No, but she sent me on out to the campgrounds at the lake, so it’s all right.”
Wringing her gloved hands, Cecil took a step closer. “Oh, you poor thing. I’m sorry. I guess I sent you on a wild-goose chase.”
“It’s all right, really.”
“You shouldn’t be out there all alone at that campground, a young little gal like you. That’s not a bit safe. Why, just a few years ago, a teenager was attacked and killed right there at that campground. It happens, even here. How many years ago has that been?” Glancing over her shoulder, she waited for input from the garden club ladies, who had tuned into the conversation.
“About fifteen,” a dark-haired woman answered, mopping her brow with the back of her sleeve, then returning to her work.
Someone chuckled, then pretended to cough. Cecil frowned, returning her attention to me. “I’ve got an extra bedroom in my house. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s open for guests.”
One of the garden club ladies muttered, “Cecil, for heaven’s sake.”
Cecil was unfazed. “It’d be better than a young girl staying all alone in a campground. It’d be safer.” “I’m fine, really. But thanks.” I took a step toward the entrance, and her brows tightened into a worry knot. I felt compelled to explain further. “I’m camping out with some cousins who have a booth at the Choctaw Labor Day Festival.”
Cecil brightened at my mention of the festival. “We’ll be at the garden club booth over there this evenin’. You decide you need a place, you just come find me there. My house is right here in town. B Street, number fifty-two.”