When I Crossed No-Bob (12 page)

I stamp out my fire, leave my cave, and, crouching under the canebrake, I watch.

A whole army passes, all of them with hoods and cut-out scare-faces on, heading toward Hatchapaloo Creek. It is like the war is starting all over again, and this here is a ghost army. More military-like than the real military, because during the war, most our soldiers didn't even have uniforms or horses. They were just ragtag units out to defend what they thought was theirs when all along this land belonged to nobody, North or South. This land, it is of itself.

I even think that I hear the sound of Pappy's voice. Then I hear the fearful, sad cries of someone they have, someone they are hurting.

I run and follow, trying to stay close behind, using the canebrakes as cover and shortcuts that only I know. I know this land now and I know how to hide. I know how to disappear behind trees. I know how to disappear inside trees.
Already I feel myself to be half ghost, slinking around these woods over rotted logs with the slow-moving snakes and field mice.

I hear the men shout and talk of their plans to kill the man they have. I try and see what I can. The man is a black man.

They all stop talking and I think they have heard me, but instead a screech owl calls. They take trigger notice. Everybody knows a screech owl's call means death is somewhere near. The black man is the only one to turn and see me. Our eyes catch. The man is Sunny Rise, Jess Still's pa. And I think,
How can this be?
They killed Jess Still and now his pa, Sunny Rise?

I put my finger to my lips. Sunny Rise nods.

"It's witchy out here tonight," someone says. It's Smasher, and I can tell from the sound of his voice that he is not trying to scare. He
is
scared.

I feel something warm and furry near my foot. It is a skunk—I must not smell human to it. I must smell animal. Quietly and very very slowly, I climb the tree next to me, and the skunk waddles away. I am right above all the men. I shake down some tree ice.

"Cold ice is falling from the sky, Mark," someone says.

I hear, "Who that be?" and "It's somebody." I hear, "Who that there?" and "This here me." I hear, "Could you mind?"

I call like a screech owl.

Sunny Rise takes notice and slowly backs away from the men who have gotten down from their horses to look around. They take a few steps further and one of the men screams like a little girl. He holds up one of the old soldier leg bones, for they stand right smack in the land of the bones. They all of them scream and take off their hoods and I lean down from my tree branch to get a closer look at their faces. The moon is low and dim tonight, but when the clouds pass I see the bright red hair of Rew Smith. He has taken off his little, white costume hood and he is standing there, wailing like a little girl.

I hear Mr. Smith yelling at Rew to quit whining. "They're just bones."

"They're prob'ly just Indian bones," I hear Pappy say. He is without his hood because I have his hood.

I can see that Sunny Rise has gotten away. He has run away, but the men still have not taken notice because they are too fearful for themselves.

I see the white tail of the skunk again, coming back now with a whole family of skunks. I shake more tree ice and it falls
on the skunk family. All that ice and the men yelling get the skunks good and mad, and with the smell comes more yelling, and finally the clouds pass again and I can see Pappy hitting Smasher on the top of the head with a thigh bone, shouting, "He got away," and Smasher is shouting,"
We
got to get out of here, now!" And Rew Smith is still standing there front and center, wailing wailing wailing.

I do not laugh because I cannot. I think of Sunny Rise, worried now, because he has seen the face of at least one of his murderers and they know this.

The next morning I wake up in my cave, hearing the sound of women's voices. Three Choctaw women are at the creek in front of my cave, making cane baskets by shaving oak and hickory branches and soaking them under water.

They are a mighty pretty sight in their frocks of brightly colored calico, their hair in long braids, tied up with ropes and ribbons. The clouds feather across the sky like so many chicken wings. I cut notch number thirty in my stick and recall last night, wondering if it was a dream. It is not long before the women are all singing Choctaw songs. How can this beautiful world contain such ugliness as I have seen?

People. They are like lightning sometimes. Unexpected, beautiful, and scary—mostly you can't run away from either one.

I wish I could raise enough pep to sing along with the women, but I am so tired and I have a powerful hunger.

I used to be glad it didn't matter what I wore or what I looked like because nobody but the animals saw me. But watching the women, seeing what they're wearing and how they're working together, makes me remember how it was to be in the kitchen or outside stirring a pot with Momma and other women, and remembering Momma sets me to wishing I was amongst women.

Why did my momma leave me behind? I could have kept up. I could have helped out. When I find her, I will ask her. Maybe I will be mad for a good long while, but then maybe she and I will set ourselves to working like these Choctaw women before me. We will work alongside each other again. We will stir a pot of soup or wash out some clothes and all the angry thoughts about Momma will finally leave me alone.

The Choctaw women sing what they are singing and say what they are saying and I can't understand a word of it, but it is good to hear their woman talk, their voices rising and falling, first talking all at once, then slowing. Hearing them is like listening to music.

And I can't help it. I forget myself and I start to hum to their talking. One of the women looks up.

It is Zula. She is not pregnant anymore. She carries a baby now in a sack hanging down in front of her. When she sees me she holds up her hand.

Zula and the other two Choctaw women take me to their camp a ways up the river where I have not gone. We do not talk as we walk, which is fine by me. I am not their captive, though I suppose I could feel like one because I have no choice but to follow.

Their camp is nicer than my cave. They have small, neat one-room cabins like settled folk, built along the banks of the river. There are small patches of tilled land ready to be planted with corn or potatoes, and a few flocks of chickens.

When that man Mr. Tempy sees me, he throws his hands up over his little red head and shouts, "I knew you would come for a visit!"

Even though he is white, Mr. Tempy is dressed like the other Choctaw men. He is wearing moccasins and buckskin, silver armbands and wristbands. There are other white men here like Mr. Tempy.

Most of the women are wearing red skirts and calico shirts. They wear their hair parted in the middle and braided behind. When she sees me staring at the bright red part in her hair, Zula lowers her head to let me touch it as she explains that she and the other women trace a line of vermilion in their parts to represent the path of the sun.

Mr. Tempy says it is a good night for me to visit because tomorrow is a ball game. He tells me that before ball games men and women gather around sacred fires.

I am not used to all this talking. I stare at their mouths as they tell me things. I am glad they are not asking questions because I wonder what language I would speak if I spoke and if it would come out as animal or human. I hope that I can recall all that good English Mr. Frank taught me.

When the sun goes down we sit around the fires Zula says
are sacred. We eat. Each family has their one bowl. Zula and Mr. Tempy have me eat from their bowl even though I am not family. I don't have to be Choctaw to know that this means something.

We feast on wild turkey and pumpkin.

The women sit in a circle and sing. The men stand outside the circle and play their chichicouas, which are gourds filled with pebbles. Zula tells me the names of their things and their dances—the turtle dance and the tick dance.

"It is a bad time for the Choctaw," Zula says. "This bright path has led us to darkness. We have lost our homes and now we are wanderers."

The turtle dancers sing and Zula tells me what their words mean: "A life in the wilderness with plenty of meat, fish, fowl, and the turtle dance is far better than our old homes, and the corn, and the fruit, and the heart-melting fear of the dreadful Europeans."

"Who are the Europeans?" I ask.

"Anglos," Zula says.

The tick dancers trace out a sacred circle in the high grass and stomp on imaginary ticks. "The ticks are the first boatload of Anglos," Zula whispers.

"Who are the Anglos?" I ask.

"Pale." Zula looks around, trying to find the word. "Tempy. You."

"So you want to stomp us?"

Zula laughs and brings bread to her lips with her fingers. "Not all of you."

The dancing and singing go on through the night. When she sees that I am tired, Zula takes me to her cabin and makes me a pallet on the floor next to hers. She and her baby and I sleep side by side. The rest are still outside, dancing now, not singing, and through the window we can see the far-off glow of their sacred fires.

The next morning, Mr. Tempy tells me he is riding into town, into Raleigh, and he sure would like some company.

I look at Zula. I look around this fine camp and at the women fixing to go down to the water to make baskets. I thank him and say no. I'd rather stay here with Zula. I miss the company of women.

When Mr. Tempy leaves, I set out with the women while the men set out with their bows and arrows to bring down big and small game. We walk forever, it seems, walking in a straight line. Zula carries her baby in the sack hanging down in front of her. Zula tells me her ancestors named one part of
the stream, the part with the white sand, Oka Bogue, which means "The Creek of Clear Water." They like the creek for the curative herbs and waters.

We settle down near the water and begin. They teach me with their hands, and all day we make baskets from the oak and hickory trees. Some of these baskets we weave tight enough to hold water. Zula's baby is a good baby and gurgles and giggles at the sound of our voices and the running water and the bobwhites calling.

I stay on like this, living among the Choctaw for as long as it is cold. I add twenty more notches to my stick of wood, making fifty days and nights that I have been away.

I learn from Zula about herbs and teas she mixes together herself. I learn from Zula about shaping a baby's head after it is born. I learn from Zula how to play chunky and other games of chance. I learn the word for mosquitoes is
marangouins.
I see the colors of Zula's baskets, colors she squeezes from the land, colors that have names I did not know before. We don't talk so much as we do. That's how I learn. I do as they do. I do as Zula does.

I get a hankering for books and I ask Zula if she has something for me to read.

"The Choctaw has no need for books," she says. "When he wishes to make known his views, like his fathers before him, he speaks from his mouth. Writing gives birth to error and feuds. When the great spirit talks, we hear him in the thunder, in the rushing winds and the mighty water."

"You want me to recite you a poem, then?" I ask.

I recite what I can remember from the poem Mr. Frank learned me. It's a poem called "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and even though I miss most of the middle, I'm real clear on the ending.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

"You are so young to know such wisdom," she says. "Much time has passed since I have heard such words."

"Oh, I didn't write that. I just recited it."

"But you are wise enough to remember. You are wise to know."

"I need more than a poem," I say.

***

One night before we both fall to sleep, Zula whispers to me, "The Anglos are looking for you." We sleep side by side just like every other night in our own women's cabin. Mr. Tempy has just come back from being gone, and he has spoken to Zula. "They have Mr. Frank in jail and Miss Irene is expecting a baby. They are saying that Mr. Frank has something to do with that black man Sunny Rise."

"Who's they?"

"A Mr. Smith. And your father."

"What happened to Sunny Rise?"

"He ran away and nobody can find him. They say Mr. Frank kidnapped him and walked him to a boat that took him north. They say he does such things."

I think on this. It could be true. He and his pa walked Buck to freedom. "But why would that land Mr. Frank in jail?"

"Sunny Rise owes money to a Mr. Smith. Now Mr. Smith says Mr. Frank has to pay him. This Mr. Smith demands an arrest warrant for Mr. Frank."

"I thought there was an arrest warrant for Mr. Smith and my pappy."

"They caught them, then set them free. Law says there were no eyewitnesses. No evidence."

"That's crazy," I say, knowing I am the
eye
in
eyewitness.

"Anglos," Zula says. "They are full up with too much noise."

We both think and we don't say anything. We can hear the low talk of men's voices outside around the fires.

"Court's in session, and I want Frank to know that I'm on his side," Mr. Tempy tells me the next morning. "I'll be honest with you, Addy. Our friend needs your help."

"But what can I do?"

"Addy, Irene told me you know some things about that fire at the schoolhouse. Just tell people what you know."

"Is Mr. Frank asking for me? Did he say he needed me?"

"He doesn't know what he needs," Mr. Tempy says. "Besides, Frank never asks for help. You and I both know that."

I feel my legs and arms shaking like they're cold. I feel my chin quiver and my eyes tear up. This comes over me all at once and I don't know why. "I'd have to tell on my pappy," I whisper. "I'm not strong like you or Mr. Frank. I don't think I can cross family."