Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

  Always when she imagines the two of them together, she returns to their first year in office. The long car trips together on the Talimena Drive in the mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma. Their afternoon picnics. These are also the memories she will keep, when everything seemed to be just right, and they believed in the same things.

  The road is again in her eye. The night he won the election they drove to the victory party at the Old Chief’s House in Swink, Oklahoma. He pulled her next to him in the front seat of the car and said he wanted her more than he wanted to become chief. “We will never be parted, I promise.” When they arrived in Swink, the house was filled with friends and families. Mostly hers. Since his parents and the rest of his relatives were dead, he had only a couple friends from NARF, the Native American Rights Fund, in Washington. Members of the Durant Chamber of Commerce, former university colleagues, state legislators and dozens of Choctaw families were there for her. Everything was out in the open. He announced that he was going to appoint her assistant chief and gave her seven white long-stemmed roses. He looked at her very quickly, but enough for his eyes to pass a message. It was as though he’d said he wanted her in front of their supporters. That strong. She cradled the roses in her arms like a baby. He told the crowd that the roses represented the Seven Grandmothers, and the seven ancient towns in Mississippi. She lowered her eyes while he spoke so no one could see how much she wanted this.

  Auda breathes in the smoke, and every tendon in her body pulls taut. She feels pain. Her hands clench the quilt, and slowly she goes over what happened. Strained muscles contort her face as the obscene vision returns. A fat chief, his mouth like a zero, hunched her against a dark paneled wall. When his chubby red face popped, he spurted a million doomed Choctaws onto the back of her blue skirt before they slid onto the carpet.

  “Wipe yourself off!” McAlester struggled to his desk and grabbed a clean handkerchief from the drawer. “Now get out of here,” he ordered. “One of these days I’ll give it to you again, but not until you beg me.”

  He brushed off his pants.

  “Ofi tek.” Bitch. Quickly, he straightened his Harvard tie. He pulled a hand mirror out of his desk to check himself, then performed like a Saturday Night Live comedian into a make-believe camera. “Does your engine need an oil and lube? Well, folks, come on down to the Choctaw Nation headquarters in Durant, and this red chief will give you the kind of oil and lube that only a full-blooded Indian can perform. Discounts for cash and family groups.”

  Sweat rolled down his forehead and he glared at her. “I didn’t hurt you. There was a time when you couldn’t wait to be alone with me.” He put the mirror down and laughed. “If you wanna keep your job, you better learn to turn the other cheek.”

  “What have you become?” she whispered.

  “Everything,” he answered, dryly. “You needed to be shown who’s Chief around here. Remember, I’m the one who appointed you assistant chief. But the keyword here is assistant. You think you know so much about our people just because you wrote one lousy history book!”

  “That isn’t why you did this to me,” she hissed. She saw McAlester battling something inside himself, but he gave up and allowed the beast to look out of his eyes.

  “Let me tell you what I did do for you. I used the Inkilish okla and Filanchi okla against each other, which saved our people from being colonized. Because of what I did, the councils of Natchez, Alibamu, Chahtas, Talapoosas, and Abihkas would sing my praises as I entered their towns. I am Imataha Chitto, the greatest leader this nation has ever had!” He was screaming, and Auda realized he had slipped into madness.

  “ALL I’VE EVER ASKED IS THAT YOU SHOW ME SOME GODDAMN RESPECT AND WEAR THE GODDAMN DRESS I BOUGHT FOR YOU!”

  She took another clean handkerchief from his desk drawer and cleaned her skirt. She saw him for what he was, a true Osano, what Choctaws abhorred most. A predator of his own people. Her mother had been right all along.

  Abruptly his mood lifted. He inhaled deeply, like an athlete bracing for a long race, then he picked up the telephone and began speaking in a sweet measured voice. “Get me the finance manager, please, ma’am.” He listened patiently to the voice on the other end of the telephone.

  “I know it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon, ma’am, but great leaders never rest,” he said softly. “I keep the money coming in so the Choctaw Nation can hire wonderful folks like yourself. Your Chief works for you, remember that.”

  McAlester drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited for Carl Tonica to answer. “Sorry to bother you at home, but I want to send the assistant chief to Ireland with the rest of the Choctaw delegation. That potato famine anniversary has turned into one interest-bearing media account we can’t let go of. I’m so thankful the old chiefs donated seven hundred dollars to the starving Irish in 1847, I could kiss all their graves.” McAlester held his hand over the receiver and whispered, “You do want to go to Ireland with me, don’t you?”

  Images of bayonets and axes paraded in Auda’s brain. The feathers of a buzzard squeezed out a bullet that fired into Redford McAlester’s head. Her tears, like a hail of gallstones, battered his body into a bloody mess while her voice remained placid.

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I?”

  McAlester turned his attention back to the phone. “Carl, put a wet towel on your head. The more tribal we appear, the more the Irish love us. The more the Irish love us, the more we’re able to move our money in and out of their banks. Besides, Auda is one beautiful woman in a traditional Choctaw dress. She’ll turn heads.”

  Like a man on amphetamines, the Chief laughed at his own obscenities, but stopped abruptly. “Call Ireland on Monday, I’ve already got the ten million. James Joyce knows what to do.” He paused. “Hell man, the Feds are the least of our worries. By the time the Genovese family figures out their money is missing, I’ll have it worked out.”

  McAlester lit a cigarette and puffed white rings of smoke into the air, and this time when he spoke his tone was ironic. “How much money did you pocket last year, Carl?” Silence.

  “I hope you’ve saved it—maybe it’s time you retired since you’re so goddamn squeamish.” He leaned back in his office chair with an air of casual amusement, as Carl Tonica was most likely begging to keep his job. “It’s all in the game, Carl. Stop worrying, I’m not going to cut you out of your share.”

  He hung up and turned to Auda. “It’s settled, you’re going to Ireland and we’re going to reenact the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1847. Then you and I will reenact the Trail of Tears for the Irish and cry at all the international photo-ops. We’ll be like—” He stopped in mid-sentence and seemed to remember himself. “Carl will have travel vouchers for you on Monday. Go home now. I want this warfare between us to end.”

  “I do too,” she said in a tired voice. Auda walked out of his office, but fell down in the hallway. When she pulled herself up, she believed that no one had seen or heard a thing.

  From somewhere in the bedroom, delirium takes a breath. A voice like an alarm spits out her name.

  Auda Billy, do you hear? Do you understand? We have returned. You can use any fire. Use them all. There are woods stripped and burned for you. There are dead leaves to feed the flames. There are words burning inside the wood. Amid the fires and more fires, amid woods and rivers, amid wind there are voices. The copper-gilt medals of the foreigners have lost their luster forever. Inside this turmoil we have slept. This day we branch our antlers and dress. Your time has come. Black time becomes red.

  Auda switches off the alarm. Seven forty-five. She looks in the mirror. The small cut on her cheek has crusted over with dried blood. Cover it up. You’ve got to hurry. A few gray hairs have sprouted overnight. After yanking them from her head, she stores them in a box on her dresser and combs her long black hair. Carefully she perfumes her legs and inner thighs and pulls on a new pair of pantyhose. Finally, she opens her closet and confronts the dress he bought her. A short tight chemise, its fresh blood color e
manates a menacing quality. And like everything McAlester buys, it’s imported. She rubs the Spandex and silk material between her fingers. She reads the manufacturer’s label. “Prodotta in Italia.” She remembers how the pack of short stocky men looked the day they arrived in Durant. They seemed to smell of New York City contracts and formaldehyde solution. Something akin to poison. Choctaw secretaries, council members, and custodians all stepped aside for the strangers in dark Armani suits who traveled in controlled chaos. The men cut an emotional swath through the Choctaw Nation, planning how they would develop the vacant Choctaw land outside of Durant into a magnificent casino palace and hotel complex. After construction began they all left, except one.

  Vico D’Amato represented Shamrock Resorts, the management company that was financing the Casino of the Sun and its adjacent four-story hotel. Auda considered D’Amato a study in monotony. Except for the ruby solitaire on his little finger that he twisted when he was nervous, he always wore gray—suits, ties, socks, even his loafers. He had thinning hair and Auda guessed he was around fifty-five.

  D’Amato said that his family hated the Feds as much as the Indians did. Every afternoon at the same time she’d find D’Amato with his feet propped up on McAlester’s desk, talking confidently with a highball glass in his hand. Once he asked her to strike a pose. “Miss Billy, you ever been in the movies?” he asked. “With your beautiful hair and eyes you could pass for Sicilian.”

  “You know Vic, the way you talk you could be reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and it would still sound vulgar,” McAlester chortled. “Auda, tell Vic to get his feet off my desk and go back to his own office.”

  The two men became close. They both loved spaghetti westerns for their violent, yet philosophical message. They even promised each other that they would set up a movie studio in Southeastern Oklahoma, not so much to make money, but to have something to do after they retired.

  In the beginning, Auda tried to warn McAlester about getting involved with D’Amato’s employers. “You’re gambling with the Choctaw people’s tribal sovereignty. We can’t borrow millions of dollars from these people, Red, they’re the Mafia!”

  He twinkled at her that day, as if placating a two-year-old. “Let me worry about that, honey. I’m not going to lose control of the tribe, I promise.”

  Why hadn’t she been able to see it then? He was already transforming himself into what the foreigners wanted: a front man.

  We’re whirling our tongues like hatchets, do you hear? Auda, do you understand? You can use any fire.

  Hurriedly, Auda returns to the mirror, her mouth half-open. She accentuates the almond shape of her eyes, modifies the arch of her brows to hide her angry face. Powders her cheeks with scarlet blush. Gobs on red lipstick. Puts on the dress and is spellbound by her reflection. There, she thinks, transformation complete. No longer woman, but warrior.

  Sliding into a pair of red stiletto pumps, Auda pushes seven silver bracelets up her wrist and struts out of the room. She doesn’t know why the Shell Shaker revealed her past to her. Or whose voice called her name. But she understands the future. She can use any fire. She will use them all. She is Auda the Redeemer. Red is the Choctaw color for war.

  Auda races downstairs to the back porch and digs in her briefcase for the keys to her Jeep. There’s commotion everywhere. Television reporters are interviewing the neighbors about last night’s prairie fire, the autumnal equinox, the meteorites. A soot-covered fire truck roars around the corner with another in tow. She looks at her pet rabbit. Jean Baptiste, her prize French Angora, is dancing in his cage as if trying to delay her from what she is going to do. She rushes back into the house, retrieves a bit of apple and shoves it through the wires. No use forgetting loved ones. She sees her mother across the street, steeped in the smoky air like an apparition. When she was a little girl she believed her mother was the woman in the creation story who lived on top of mountains and ate from the lips of the volcano.

  Auda catches her mother’s gaze before she leaves. It is unwavering, it steels her. She thinks about the Irish as she speeds along the magnolia-lined streets of her hometown. Belfast is probably not so different from Durant. She turns into the tribal headquarters parking lot. At last her history is mute.

  At nine A.M. a gunshot echoes through the Choctaw Nation headquarters. Auda feels her chin quivering like an old lady’s. She sees the bullet hit its mark. Watches the .45 caliber pistol fall to the floor as if in slow motion. Then nothing.

  She regains consciousness as a Bryan County sheriff’s deputy is breaking down the door of the chief’s office. Auda hears him scream. Together they look at McAlester. He’s leaning back in his chair, his boxer shorts and suit pants down around his ankles, parading his flabbiness. There is blue-black hair and bloody bone splattered on the wall behind him. Most of the back of his head is gone, but his cheeks are blotted with the imprint of red lips.

  The deputy rushes outside the office to a crowd of tribal employees who nervously wait. She can almost see his queasy expression as he reports the news.

  “It was a cruel joke,” she hears him say. “She shot him with his pants down.”

  By nine-fifteen buzzards wait in the sky. When the tribal police arrive, the Choctaw sergeant is so angry he punches Auda in the mouth.

  Some time later, Auda comes to in a jail cell. She doesn’t know where she is, or how much time has passed. Her lips and jaw ache, and there’s blood all over her dress. Just as she tries to sit up on the cot, Susan Billy is being escorted into her cell by a Bryan County sheriff’s deputy.

  “I hope you understand,” says the deputy to her mother, “that the sheriff doesn’t let just anyone visit the prisoners.”

  Susan Billy thanks him, and he locks them both inside the cell and walks away.

  “I tried to do what the spirit wanted,” whispers Auda, not even sure any sound emerges. Her mother sits down on the cot and gives her a look that says, “say no more.” She gently grasps Auda’s hands, examining each finger, one by one, as if she’s never seen them before. Auda thinks their hands resemble the splayed brittle twigs of an oak tree. Daughter kindling, mother limbs.

  Finally the sheriff, a big hulking man named Carter Diggs, enters the cell and towers over them. He nods politely at her mother, but orders Auda to stand up. “Auda Billy, I’m charging you with the murder of forty-four-year-old Choctaw Chief, Redford McAlester. Although there are no fingerprints on the weapon found at the murder scene and no powder burns on your hands, I believe you are guilty as charged. Besides,” he says, looking directly at her mother, “considering the mood at tribal police headquarters, I think I’m doing you a favor by booking you here.”

  Auda nods that she understands. The sheriff reads her her rights then leaves. A Choctaw policewoman from the tribal headquarters and a deputy enter the cell to guard her. Then her mother, who has been silent all this time, stands up and says calmly, “I killed Chief Redford McAlester. It was my gun and I shot him in the head... Osano abi bolle li tok.”

  “What was that last remark?” asks the deputy. The Choctaw policewoman translates in a voice filled with disbelief. “The old one said she killed the Casino Chief.”

  3 | Intek Aliha, The Sisterhood

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  SUNDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 22, 1991

  AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

  “So you see, I have seven, and twenty-four? Thirty-one hours to live. Here’s your lark, Torvald.” The theater goes black. The auditorium at the Dallas Theatre rocks with applause, the gold curtain falls, and Tema Billy knows she has nailed her performance as Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House. Throughout the first and second acts, her performance was icy and focused. She verily stalked the stage in order to give Nora Helmer a sense of foreboding. Tema feels impending doom, but dismisses it as her transformation into character; next, she will build Nora’s edginess into a powerful storm that frees her from the suffocating Torvald Helmer.

  When Tema tried out for the role, the director told her he was impressed
with her passionate interpretation of Nora Helmer. After she had gotten the part, he asked her why she thought she played Nora with such clarity. She replied that Torvald Helmer’s relationship with Nora was very much like federal government’s paternalism of American Indians. “Somewhere inside Nora, she’s always known that she was destined to leave her husband, in the same way that we Indians know we will one day break free of the federal government.” The director seemed surprised, and said that he hadn’t known that she was Native American. He thought she was Italian.

  She waits for her cue in Act Three and busies herself by tying and untying the long black shawl over her costume. Several yards away the stage manager beckons her from the left-hand prompt corner. He points to the set door that is unexpectedly sticking as the actors enter and exit the stage. She motions to him that she knows about it.

  Tema is delighted to be so close to home, only an hour from Durant, Oklahoma. She took the job at the Dallas Theatre so that her son, Hoppy, could be near her family. She’d always meant to return to Choctaw Country to live, but somehow found excuses not to. Tema left Oklahoma in the spring of 1972, the year she turned eighteen and announced to her mother she was leaving Durant forever. She enrolled in Okmulgee Tech to become a plumber and pipe fitter for six dollars an hour. That was big money for an Indian woman. At Okmulgee the next fall, her friend Jon Grounds, a Euchee from Sapulpa, joined an American Indian dance company and she followed him to New York. Although they never married, their son, Hopaii Iskitini, Little Prophet, was born the following year. Over the years Hopaii, nicknamed Hoppy, had lived up to the name. Sometimes it seemed he really could see the future. When he was five, he asked her at breakfast one morning if Daddy was going away for a while. By the end of the day it was true. Jon returned to Sapulpa and to his mother’s house to learn the traditions of his people. Occasionally he sends for Hoppy to participate in Euchee ceremonies, but her son remains wholly Choctaw.