“I may not be able to make you white,” he told them. “But I can make you act like it.” He paused to knock a boy on the head with the black whip for paying insufficient attention.
That the Creek Council had hired him to civilize these children proved his theory that the sloughing off of savagery and heathenism were primal human drives. They needed only prodding and the lash to show themselves. His whip was his prod, the Bible his lash. These young ones would be better men than their fathers had been. They would be fit to live alongside white men. They would be called Christians.
Rufus lapped up every dime novel he could find about Cherokee Bill, who, he had read, once robbed every store from one end of the town of Lenapal to the other. Half Negro, Half Cherokee, he rode with Bill Cook and killed a Deputy with a shotgun from the back of a galloping horse. They say he shot a man during a robbery because he didn’t like the look in his eye. Bill was his favorite, the last of the living legends. Another favorite: Ned Christie, a full-blooded Cherokee. Rufus saw himself as sharpshooter, like Christie, blacksmith and gunsmith, like Christie, and like him, a law-abiding citizen tending home and hearth until viciously pursued for a murder he did not commit, from which time he had no choice but to run and wander—alone, hardening, honing his skills and keeping all law at bay through Indian know-how and superior cunning. Little did the public know that he was a good man. How tragic, Rufus thought, that they would only know the lawman’s lie of the ruthless murderer. A deadeye, he could have easily killed his pursuers, but he did not. He only shot to injure them. Rufus smiled at that, because, unlike Christie, he would have known the effect his mercy would have on the cowardly lawmen. Rufus would have known that instead of acknowledging his kindness, they would feel humiliated and multiply their efforts to kill him dead—a good, honest man who dared to spare their sorry lives.
Later, he thought, the smile had given him away—the smile as he imagined himself as Ned Christie, alone in a small cabin, successfully fighting off a phalanx of law with only his single rifle—until the cowards used dynamite to blow the wall off the cabin. And then he saw his own dead body, as if from heaven, laid out just as Ned Christie’s had been. He watched the son of the lawman he was accused of killing slowly approach and empty a revolver into his still-fresh corpse. He watched crowds surround his body on the steps of the Federal Courthouse in Fort Smith (where he’d been displayed for the instruction and edification of local school children.) He saw the children eye him, and knew that in their minds his corpse was not a warning, but a call.
To the background noise of Callahan’s mellifluous drone, Rufus imagined the epic gunfight during Cherokee Bill’s escape from Tahlequah, where he’d gone to collect his $265.70 in Cherokee money. Rufus had seen the spot with his very own eyes, and was vividly dreaming the raucous, smoke-filled scene when Callahan’s whip sent fire down his cheek. He raised his hand at the painful sting. Blood seeped through his fingers. Without thinking he jumped to his feet. Callahan stood impossibly erect—to the point of leaning backwards—and stared contemptuously down at him.
“The very sight of the ruthless red Indian in all of his Godlessness,” Rufus had read. At least his color should have struck fear, as it did with Christie and Cherokee Bill, but it didn’t. Callahan showed none. It was the man’s assuredness that galled Rufus. The lack of any fear; the assurance that he had the right to dole out pain without consequence. So in an instant, Rufus grabbed the stick from Callahan’s hand, and as if hurling a rock, slashed him with it. The class gasped. Callahan grabbed for the weapon. Rufus pushed the grasping hands away and they struggled like children for the little black stick until Rufus finally snatched it and threw it to the corner of the room.
“Get out!” Callahan screamed, shaking with rage and pointing to the door.
Rufus stood his ground—sixteen and almost eye-to-eye, he felt power for the first time.
Callahan lurched toward him. Rufus ripped a knife from his pocket and held its blade aloft. It split Callahan’s image. The instructor stopped short.
“You are sin,” Callahan said, low and calm. “You are savage, and there is no putting you to rights.”
“That’s all you got now, words?” Rufus taunted.
Callahan stepped back. “Look at him, all of you. This is one that no one can save. He will live in gutters, like a dog and God will turn his back on him…”
Rufus wiped the blood from his face and slowly turned to go. Callahan followed, step for step, haranguing as if exorcising demons from the soul of the room. He thundered, ‘You became filled with violence within, And you sinned; Therefore I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God.”
Rufus was 100 yards away before he heard no more of that voice. He didn’t know why, but for the first time knew that such words didn’t matter, that they could not brand him.
It was his first small step toward his destiny.
He didn’t go home—not because he dreaded his father’s reaction. His father would accept it as he accepted everything—as another defeat. Rufus swore that if someone showed up with bagfuls of money, his father would moan. It was as if some gut-shot loss had possessed every inch of him, not to be banished by any joy, no matter how great. Rufus simply didn’t want to be the cause of yet more whiskey-soaked self-pity.
He heard old-timers say that Tulsey Town used to be a little nothing of a place. Then, they said, the railroad came and immediately began doing what it still did with ever-increasing vigor. Rufus hitched a ride from Okmulgee to watch as the Tulsey trains disgorged white folks and livestock—inhaling lumber in return. He watched the long, black cars arrive in clouds of screeching noise and black smoke. Freight doors thundered open, ramps slapped the ground, Indian and white men shunted cattle in and out of the cars, hollering, whips cracking, the cows lowing endlessly. Further down the train, white men and women done up in finery stepped out of the passenger cars. These were the fancy types who came before the Creek council for permits to log and graze the land.
Another car spat plainer folk. Sun-darkened men in sweat-stained shirts, women in soiled tops and simple skirts with caps and kerchiefs on their heads. Faces smudged, dirty children in tow, they eyed their new surroundings with hope and trepidation, wondering if this would be the place where they could fulfill the vague promise of “better and more,” embedded in their minds as firmly as God’s existence.
Rufus’ gaze lingered on the Dandies. Seeing them next to the dull men and women was like brightness and daylight compared to dirt. Compared to the Indians and freedmen, they were big, light, brilliant birds that could fly away on a wind if they wanted. He felt a knot in his stomach, fearing that his short, dark self could not compare to them. Maybe that was what his father wanted him to learn by sending him to Callahan’s school... what he didn’t have the heart to tell him—that they had won because they were better. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind.
~
As he stared at his shackles and chains, the Sunday morning train slowed at the Fort Smith station. All night, throughout the tense, stealthy flight from the wailing lynch mobs in Okmulgee, Rufus had searched his past and identified more and more signs and signals that had set him on his current course—the road that had taken him so close to being a great man. The Ft. Smith church bells tolled for his victims. He counted the deep, mournful chimes. They reminded him of similar tinnier, less sonorous bells that again linked his past to his present and his inevitable future because on most Sundays for the first twelve years of his life his mother had said, “Let’s go see the people,” as she donned her best dress and her plain, black hat with bright feathers on it. On those days, John Buck had the wagon hitched and ready and lifted the boy up into his seat before he patted the horses to send them down the road. Rufus waved goodbye until his arm ached. Rufus liked these trips because during them, his mother was different. She wore a small smile instead of the usual pinched look.
“How come you don’t live here?” he asked her as they entered the fre
edman town full of black faces to the sounds of the high church bell.
“Your Daddy’s Creek,” she said. “But if my Mama had lived, this probably where I’d be.” She looked down at her son and smiled. “On Sundays it gets to be.”
As usual, the preacher stood in front of the small congregation, the worshippers on their feet before empty chairs. Rufus liked the music sung to hand claps. But this day, suddenly, shockingly, a woman screamed as if on fire and threw her hands up in the air.
“Jesus!” she hollered, as if he had threatened her. “Jesus! Oh Jesus, JESUS!” She flew forward and others cleared a path and pushed her toward the preacher as if her wildness merited an honored place.
“The spirit of the Lord is with us today,” the preacher calmly stated with a beatific smile as he opened his arms to the wailing woman as if to showcase her outrageous gyrations and accent her shattering yelps. The singing rose in volume and intensity. Rufus stared at the picture of the ethereal, blonde Jesus against the rough, wooden wall and wondered what He had done to the woman to make her scream and holler so. Had this Jesus invaded her like some frantic demon and if so, what message was so vital that it made the woman spit and spasm so violently to be heard?
Then he saw her. A vision. And the moment he did, he knew his world had changed.
She stood serenely before the congregation. She looked directly at him, unmoved by the woman’s wild exclamations—oblivious to the congregants’ raucous song. In a white, flowing robe against skin almost as white, she beckoned him, as calm as the heavens themselves. Eyes bluer than any sky. Without sound, without motion, she called him. He felt her draw on what must have been his soul. He had never felt a pull so deep and strong before. He yearned to follow, but something held him back. Despite her blissful mien, there was darkness in her. She bespoke something too big and ponderous for his young self to bear. It might crush him, he thought. It was too much. In his head, in words he knew that only she could hear, he told her that he could not come to her, could not join her as the woman writhing joined her Jesus, not now, not yet. He was scared to be an Angel’s chosen one.
And then, as if rebuffed, the angel disappeared. The screaming woman fell to the ground, moaning and writhing, shaking spasmodically, mumbling, “Jesus, Jesus, take me, Jesus...”
He stared at the flailing figure transfixed. He knew that his dangerous Angel, not the humdrum Jesus, had conjured such fearsome exultation.
Every subsequent Sunday he waited. He stared at the woman who had called out before, awaiting her next effusion, a sign of the presence of his Angel. The woman swayed and muttered, but nothing more. He closed his eyes and pictured her in place of the Jesus on the wall, but his Angel did not reappear.
Young, he forgot her over time.
And then, almost three years hence, she returned. It was after his mother stopped going to the freedman town to worship her God. She never said why she stopped and Rufus never asked her. It was after the pinched look overtook her face, and after his father began to act as if desperately pondering the unfathomable, the comprehension of which all things—even his life—depended.
Sitting chained on the train to Ft. Smith, his heart quickened as he recalled the dream, and how She spoke to him of destiny. He sighed and smiled with such pleasure that his guards came forward. One grabbed his wrists to check his chains. He continued to smile as he remembered the tenderness with which she’d touched his face and hair. He had felt her. Soft, white skin against his. He felt her everywhere. It was her gift. She showed him signs. She filled his head with echoes and images. He saw Callahan’s face and heard his deep, stentorian voice intoning tales of Biblical salvation. He saw Creeks outfitted for battle thundering forward, the hooves of hundreds of horses literally shaking the earth beneath his dream, and he heard a haunted, unearthly sound above the din he knew to be the wail of the “bagpipes.” Her hand caressed his arms and then his chest. He felt their light touch telegraph her warmth through the hair on his thighs and then his manhood submerged into warmth and wetness like the flesh of heaven itself. In his dreams he rose from the bed in delight and ecstasy, bathed in a slow, honeyed warmth as lustrous as the Angel’s hair.
He woke convulsing. Warm, slick goo shot prodigiously forth. He lay panting and confused, exhausted with satisfaction both celestial and demonic. He stared at and fingered the mucousy porridge he’d spilled from his belly to his chin. From the other boys’ tales, he realized what had happened, but none had mentioned Her. If She was his alone, he figured he was truly blessed, her Chosen One.
He wanted to run outside and tell the world, but knew better. He sensed that his was a savage Angel who pleasured, but terrorized as well. Her missives were not to be ignored or thoughtlessly cast about. But how to read them? He jumped from his bed and ran to the kitchen, grabbed a can of lard and returned to his room. He slathered his member and stroked it furiously, eyes closed to conjure the Angel again. He conjured and he conjured with all his might, and again the liquid splurged into his hand, but alas, no heavenly being and what had been shudders were mere vibrations compared to the euphonic quakes that She had induced. So he tried again. He closed his eyes and pictured her white flesh beneath the flowing gown. Again the warm liquid, the vague sensations, but no heavenly host. His hands and half his arms shone with lard and all around his privates gleamed like polished bronzed but still he tried again, despite the growing pain. It barely throbbed to the beat of his heart, so he struggled more mightily until he scratched a spot of blood on the tip. He panted from the effort and the pain seared with each stroke, but this was his Temple. It was the church through which almighty God had spoken and through which He had sent his minion to mark Buck’s destiny, and it was his duty to sing praise and hosannas to Her viscous and agonizing Glory until she made her purpose clear. He tried, but the pain grew too great. Beaded with sweat, his arms fell limply to his sides as he sat on the edge of his bed, knowing that he would await Her return like a bride awaits her groom, like a prophet his God.
~ ~ ~
Bill Swain’s stubborn mare pulled his cart through the pre-dawn light. He reluctantly rode to Fort Smith where they had taken his daughter. He had no choice. The letter... the goddamned letter demanded it. Like a too-familiar song the words filled his head as the sun rose and his aching back bounced on the wagon’s wooden seat. He eyed the rising sun and the morning’s first soaring birds, but the song played on. He was heading there, wasn’t that enough? He was doing his duty, as demanded. He had fallen as low as any white man could… Wasn’t that enough for her?
“God mutherfuckin’ dammit to HELL!” he screamed at the golden emptiness. The mare ignored his outburst. He rifled the saddlebag sitting next to him and removed the creased, torn papers. He carefully unfolded them. They were dreaded, but sacred nonetheless. Even after all these years, each time he opened it something in him hoped that magic had occurred and he would read something different. But again, the letter had not changed. Not since he last read it, not since he’d first read it 13 years ago. But he kept at it. He kept reading it as if the letters would dance on the page and land in different patterns, thus rewriting his life and revealing him, to his own delight, to be a better man.
To My husband, Bill Swain, at the time of my death,
The world is broken and I can no longer stumble through it. The spasms are like a devil inside me. I am too old. I should have been spared this. But if the child I prayed I would never bear lives, I hope it is a boy so he can go off and make his own way when he is still young. The colored woman attending says that it won’t be much longer. There’s something wrong. The baby is not right inside me. I’ve seen women’s birthing pains and this is not like them. This pain is God’s curse. This hellfire inside an old woman is not bringing life. It is a herald and it is saying that my time has come and that my passage will not be easy. I do not believe that I am to blame for the life I have led, but if I have lived poorly enough to deserve this tortured path to God’s infinite mercy, I accept it in the na
me of the Lord.
I had believed that you were a good man. To my youth-blinded eyes you, barely older than I, were brave and strong as you took the uniform to fight. You made me feel that an army of men so honorable and courageous could not fail against those who would steal from us what we had made and what was ours by right. So I became a child bride to a near-child husband. At first, your letters filled me with pride. And later, I did not believe the stories of failure and loss because you could not fail and you could not lose.
To find you cowering, stinking of your own filth—a deserter, not a scratch on you—it was the day I began my long, slow dying. I saw the look on old Celia’s black face as she stared down at you. All the niggers were talking their freedom and our loss and she looked at you with triumph in her eyes. I marched right over to her and slapped it out of them. Then she did the unspeakable. She raised her hand and struck me. You watched. That nigger slapped my face, and then slapped it again and then again until I knelt on the ground cowering from her nigger strength above and beyond that of any white woman. Had there been any man left in you, you would have risen and whipped the skin off her back before you killed her dead and then hung her up for the others to learn a lesson. But you sat whimpering with your hands across your head like it was you she beat. She ran off that day and took all the young ones with her. They knew we were done. They could smell your fear. Like animals, they knew defeat when they saw it.
I left you lying there. After three days, when you did not come out, I returned to find you just as I had left you, but now half-dead from lack of food or water. And like a fool I dragged you outside. I washed the filth from you. I fed you spoonful by spoonful, and seeing the nothing behind your eyes, almost began to feel sorry for you. I started to pray that you would come back to me the man I had married and who had promised me a life of plenty and contentment under God’s watchful eye.
I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang Page 4