Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy
“We’re coming,” a few strange voices called out, and a frantic chorus responded from different points all around him. “Here.” “Over here.” He recognized one of the voices as Amy’s.
Cow Tom saw his wife, always a strong swimmer, drag Maggie toward a jagged piece of broken-off debris in the river and get her bearings, and was relieved to see a small rescue boat with a single lantern rowing in their direction. Close by was Malinda, but she was too far for Amy to reach without letting go of Maggie. Bella was nowhere in sight.
Cow Tom swam hard in the direction of his daughter, arm over arm, fighting the pull of the river. He came up to get his bearings, and struggling to see through the frigid spray and the driving rain and wind, watched as Malinda, panicked, began to thrash wildly. Bella’s head appeared from beneath the water mere inches from his daughter, and within seconds, his mother had the girl propped up and her arms pinned back so she couldn’t take them both down. Cow Tom took another deep breath for one last effort to reach them, and when he surfaced again, Bella had already pulled the girl close to the rescue boat, Malinda still fighting the while. Cow Tom could see Bella’s fatigue, but they were at the boat, and he and Bella pushed Malinda up and over the lip of the side, and hands from inside reached out and pulled her in to safety.
“We got her. We got her.” Amy’s voice.
Exhausted, every muscle in his body aching and the frigid cold beginning to numb his mind, Cow Tom took a moment to orient himself in the water as he clung to the side of the boat, half in, half out of the torrent. Amy and Maggie were safe. Malinda was safe, and Bella had saved her. But where was Bella? The pelting rain made visibility almost impossible, but Bella had been right beside him just seconds before.
He dove under, but the water was so dark and there was so much debris, he made out only outlines and shifting shapes. But then he bumped Bella, her body a limp curl, spiraling downward in a loose fall. She had released herself to the water, tiny bubbles floating upward as she drifted down. He made his way to her and snatched at her shirt, making good contact on the second try, and pulled her up to the surface as quickly as he could, getting her head above the flow before he drew in air for himself. She was still, heavy and lifeless, but then her body bucked, and she began to gasp for air, sputtering and coughing, greedy for breath.
Cow Tom called out until he grew hoarse, as so many others were calling.
“Over here!”
Not one but two rescue boats raced toward them, at cross purpose to one another, and for the second time that night, Cow Tom experienced a moment of inescapable clarity as the inevitable collision came directly at them.
He hadn’t come this far to see his mother hurt again, and he shifted position, spinning Bella out with one arm as if a dance partner, hopefully removed from harm’s way, and jammed his hand in between the two boats, absorbing the brunt of the impact. The pain wasn’t as much as he expected. He had the clearness of mind to puzzle out that the icy water lessened what would surely bring greater pain later, but even so, he felt the pincerlike pressure on his left hand and up his arm, and was certain of broken bones and escaping blood. He refused to go into the rescue boat until Bella was safely aboard, and once he saw her pulled up, he allowed them to bring him in too.
“Where is she?” he demanded, over and over, until they cleared a path in the small boat so his mother was in his line of sight.
Bella was slumped over, wrapped tight in a blanket, shivering, a little stunned, but seemed free of injury. She stared at him, her breath coming in short bursts. Cow Tom could no longer hold on to himself, and the next he knew, someone carried him to land.
Hundreds of Creeks lined the shore, both dead and alive. Bella refused to leave his side. He balked at staying put, and struggled to his feet to find Amy, despite the blood and his mangled hand, but Bella pushed him back down and wiped at his gory fingers with a strip of her tunic. When done, she helped him stand and took the lead, pushing him forward in the search, acting as his eyes and ears. Amid the dark and confusion, they came across Amy ministering to the deep leg gashes of a young Creek boy who had lost both parents to the water. The girls were at her heels. Amy didn’t bother to blink back the tears when she saw Cow Tom, and threw her arms around him. She discovered the mess of his left hand.
“So much death,” she said.
“You all right?” he asked his wife. Not back a full week, and she’d almost slipped from him again. Her arms were heavily bruised, whether from boat or water, there was no telling.
“We survived,” Amy said.
She inspected his hand and unwound Bella’s rag to use as a bandage.
“No way to save the fingers,” she said.
Cow Tom heard her through a fog, his head once again betraying him. He had to sit. “How many?” he asked.
“You still got seven,” she said. She rewrapped his hand, and as horns and whistles and bells pierced the night, he couldn’t prevent himself from falling into a deep sleep.
He woke several times throughout the long night, sometimes to Amy and Bella, and sometimes to only Bella, who refused to leave him when Amy left to minister to the sick who might still be saved. They filled him in on reports of the collision, as much as they knew.
Each time he woke briefly in the night, he felt a little stronger, more himself, and each time, Bella’s port-stained face filled him until he drifted back to sleep. Toward morning, he opened his eyes, searching for fragments of the nightmare he’d carried so long, the little-boy terror of the galloping horse widening the distance between him and his mother, and him left behind.
“Bella?”
She sat next to him on the ground, cradling his head in her lap. Her eyes were clear and fully present, and she smiled at him in relief.
“Tom,” Bella said. “My Tom.”
He didn’t stop himself this time. He reached up and touched the pebbly texture of the birthmark on Bella’s face, and she let him.
He winced at the pain of his bandaged hand, but the penalty was small.
He may have lost three of his fingers, but he regained his mother.
Chapter 23
THEY SPENT THE night at Prophet Island Bend, the other two steamers from New Orleans hulks against the dock, unwilling now to set off again in the dark. A mist hung low, soaking everyone to the skin. There was no good solution; to overload and put survivors on another steamboat invited a repeat of disaster, but hundreds of wet and shivering Creeks were without shelter. The military loaded some Indians on the Yazoo, but others balked, including Chief Yargee, who decreed his people stay ashore, despite the sleet and cold. At Henderson Point, they’d had their bark huts, but at least the military came in force now to pass out supplies and food and medicine. The Creeks were much reduced, at least by half, and pieces of the broke-apart steamer and bloated bodies washed downstream throughout the long night.
The next morning, not too long from light’s break, Cow Tom volunteered for death detail. Some selfish part of him wanted to stay asleep, his head in his mother’s lap, but he couldn’t lie still while others were far worse off. He thought of Harry, possibly a body unclaimed among the wreckage.
Alongside others working the riverbanks, he pulled bodies from the water, and positioned them inland for identification, ignoring the pain of his left hand, wrapping the bandage tighter, and favoring his right. Almost all the bodies were Creek, and Cow Tom hardened himself, as if pulling logs from the unforgiving river and not corpses. There were Negroes among them, and he studied the features of each, heartsick, but also relieved as each proved not to be Harry. He dragged ashore one of the bodies of the two non-Indians, immediately identified by a military man as the Monmouth’s fireman, and once more, Cow Tom thanked the Great Spirit they’d been up on the deck when the catastrophe happened, and nowhere near the boiler room.
He fetched another body from the water, turning the young Creek woman faceup for easi
He sat on the river’s edge, next to this latest body, just for a minute, he told himself, and closed his eyes to the ugliness surrounding him. There was no danger of sleep, but he found it increasingly difficult to think about opening his eyes or resuming his chore. He wasn’t sure how long he sat, but felt a rough hand on his shoulder, shaking hard.
Harry Island stood before him. He’d lost his hat, and squinted against the sun, panic on his face, but other than that, appeared fine. Cow Tom revived, suddenly almost light-headed.
“You gave me a start,” Harry said, “pretending ill.” But then he noticed the bandaged hand. “You are hurt.”
“Fingers lost to a good cause. Bella is still with us.”
To his surprise, Cow Tom found himself pouring out the whole story. He’d meant to share only the change of name from Bella to Sarah, and the trick of getting her aboard the Monmouth, and her near death in the wreck, but he couldn’t stop talking. He told Harry of his mother’s abduction, his child’s longing, and Harry didn’t interrupt, nodding but silent. For an instant, Cow Tom even considered telling Harry about killing the black Seminole brave, but that was a story of a different sort, a tale of personal shame and dishonor, to be hidden at all cost.
“I came out looking for you this morning,” Harry said when he’d finished. “Much better to find you mangled than dead. Soon you won’t have body parts left to give up.”
“I looked for you in the water too,” Cow Tom admitted.
“We lost two in the crash,” Harry said. “Those cussed fools in charge, packing us on that no-count boat. Most belowdecks gone. Three hundred dead. Maybe more.”
“Not one of ours taken,” Cow Tom said. A hard lump lodged in his throat, and he coughed it away. In the midst of so much death, he latched onto a moment of wonder. He still stood, with a family intact. And a tribe. And now a friend.
“Enough of the sea. I’m moving to shovels,” said Harry, and Cow Tom agreed, falling in step behind.
They left the muddy bank and joined others digging burial holes in the interior for those already identified. They dug for hours, the work harsh and dispiriting, but Cow Tom felt steadier than he had for months.
“Rumor is, military opens claims this afternoon for property gone and dead Negroes,” Harry told Cow Tom.
“Chief Yargee lost his money bag in the storm. My get-free money was in that sack. Scant chance they’ll find it.”
“Or return it if they do,” said Harry.
“You don’t try,” said Cow Tom, “you don’t get.”
His fate was tied to Chief Yargee, his and his family’s. He wasn’t anxious to bring attention to their party, especially until Bella was safely out of the South and in Indian Territory, but he knew Chief Yargee’s gold was important for the tribe, and would buy them all a faster start in the new land, for food and seed, for building supplies and cattle. No matter what happened, freedom would have to wait.
As Harry predicted, the military set up an area near the dock in the late afternoon. Cow Tom persuaded Chief Yargee to be among the first to file his claim, and accompanied him to the makeshift area.
Cow Tom recognized one of the military men from the Monmouth under the shelter of a tree, and not far from where he sat, other officials combed through flotsam and jetsam washed up on shore, separating items still usable—clothes, shoes, cookery, planks, spectacles, instruments, weapons, blankets, baskets, watertight barrels—from the clearly useless or destroyed. There were any number of mounds of uneven heights, and a stream of men carrying additional recovered items inland added to them, dumping their loads before going out for more.
“Chief Yargee brought a bag of money from Alabama,” Cow Tom translated. “Gold coin and paper. The sack was near the cabin when the Monmouth went down. He can single out the markings, a white-faced owl carved into a red deerskin rucksack.”
The military man took down the chief’s name, making scratches in his book, and when they gave a detailed description of the bag, he made notes about that too.
“Tell the chief we’ll notify him should we come across such a bag,” the military man said.
Cow Tom held little hope. Either the money was at the bottom of the river, or would soon be lining some official’s pocket.
“What’s he say?” Yargee asked.
“Chief Yargee asks if he can search now,” Cow Tom said to the military man. “Search through the grounds.”
At first, the military man wasn’t inclined, but Cow Tom pressed the point for Yargee. The night and day had been long and wearing for the military too, and finally, in exhaustion more than anything else, he agreed with a shrug.
“Nothing gets carried away. Just look for your sack.”
He and Yargee spent the next two hours sifting through sogged messes piled along the shore, culling through rubble. They split the piles between them, Cow Tom to the right and Yargee to the left, moving large items to uncover what lay underneath, searching for the tanned reddish color that held their future. Twice, Cow Tom jammed his bad hand in the stubborn debris and had to wait for the pain to subside before renewing the search. He and Yargee met again in defeat near the center of the piles, but before they could commiserate over their failure, they both saw the flash of the familiar color in an unexamined stack just unloaded downriver.
Chief Yargee was first to the heavy sack, and Cow Tom helped him drag it to the side, away from the other wreckage. The chief opened the large pouch, and discovered both the gold and paper money intact. The currency was water-soaked and stuck together, but all there.
The military man, when they told him, seemed surprised by their find, and when they led him down the bank and showed him the white-faced owl carved into the sack as they’d described earlier, he was quick to offer to dry out the paper money for them and return the sack later.
Cow Tom translated, and Chief Yargee told Cow Tom he was willing to come back that afternoon, but Cow Tom did a quick negotiation of his own.
“We could take the gold now, and come back for the paper,” he reasoned with Yargee. The chief agreed, and Cow Tom presented the chief’s wishes.
The military man didn’t seem particularly pleased with this suggestion, but he released the gold to them, which Cow Tom carried back to the encampment.
They never saw the paper money again.
Two days later, they were assigned another steamer, and proceeded up the Mississippi to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. Compared to its beginnings, the remainder of the trip was uneventful, and when the time came to march, Amy’s foot was much improved, almost healed, and both Cow Tom and Bella helped carry Malinda and Maggie. They were all received, processed, and recorded at the fort, and only awaited release.
Bella played her part, as did Chief Yargee, and Bella became Sarah, the cook. After a week’s stay, the entire party struck out from Fort Gibson to begin again, staked with the meat from half a cow, a wagonload of corn, a flint and steel to start a fire, a big-eyed hoe, and an ax, all from the government in recognition of their Removal. And they had Chief Yargee’s bag of gold coins from the sale of their Alabama cattle, in hopes of putting together a new home along the Canadian River.
Indian Territory
–1842–
Chapter 24
JUST PAST DAYBREAK, Cow Tom picked his way through the mudded trails of Tuckabatchee village, outside North Fork, two days from Yargee’s homestead. Alth
He found the cabin along the road leading into the village proper. A man in his middle thirties sat on the porch in front of the small log house, and coolly assessed Cow Tom as he drew near. On his turban, three wild turkey feathers rose from the back of his head like a peacock’s plume, and he dressed in age-dark deerskin leggings under his tunic and a loosely wrapped blanket about his upper body. An old fiddle of polished wood rested at his feet.
“Say, brother,” the man called in Mvskoke, “do you fear God?”
Cow Tom drew closer. “That I do,” he answered.
“Do you drink?”
“I’ve passed the jug.”
“Do you idle?”
“Too much needs doing to sanction a life slid past.”
“Have you come to seek women?”
Tuckabatchee’s two main businesses were whiskey stores and brothels. “I got all the woman I need,” said Cow Tom.
“Have you come to listen to my sermon this fine day?”
“I’m fresh from the sale of a brood cow in North Fork,” said Cow Tom. “But I’m come to visit my old friend Harry Island.”
“Then welcome, brother.”
“Too long past, Harry.”
Harry jumped off the porch, his belt buckle clanking against the bone necklaces down his chest, and with great gusto, clapped Cow Tom on the back. Neither of the men could be considered tall, but Cow Tom had at least a couple of inches on Harry Island, and Harry circled him slowly several times, studying him head to toe.
“You’ve filled out since Florida,” he said. “Not easy where good land is scarce and food scarcer.”