Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy
“Rose, be quick. Set stones to boil,” Gramma Amy commanded.
Both cousins began bawling, lips trembling, hands intertwined, Lulu’s fear feeding into Emmaline’s and back again, but they did as they’d been told and kept their distance from their mother even as the horror filled them. Every member of the household had seen this disease, and knew its course.
The water in the black kettle outside was still warm, and Rose found several rocks and dropped them into the pot. She gathered what twigs she could find and built up the fire underneath. When the stones were hot enough, she fished them out with a branch and lugged them back into the hut wrapped in a blanket. Still, she’d burned her hands, but that was of no consequence now.
Back in the hut, Gramma Amy had Aunt Maggie on her back, and had already swathed her in a mustard poultice. She took the hot stones in the blanket and placed them on Maggie’s abdomen. The room was small, and fear crowded it even more. Rose watched, helpless, and when Grampa Cow Tom came home at last, Gramma Amy was quick to block his way.
“Get them all out of here. Find someplace else to stay.”
His face crumpled at the sight of Maggie, and he comprehended the scene in a glance. He moved to pack up some belongings for the move.
“Nothing from here leaves the hut,” said Gramma Amy. “Nothing.”
“What about you?” Grampa Cow Tom asked.
“I look after Maggie, and come if I can.”
Gramma Amy’s expression was stern. She cautioned him against coming any closer, but her eyes were liquid, as were Grampa Cow Tom’s. They held each other in a gaze for a second, no more, but even through her dread, Rose felt the tight bond of their connection, just the two of them, as though holding each other close.
“Get them to burn it all down,” Gramma Amy said. “The officials. Make them listen. It must all burn.”
Grim-faced, Grampa Cow Tom nodded.
Rose looked to Ma’am for comfort, but her mother’s face was blank, barely registering. Grampa Cow Tom gathered all those remaining to him as if they were tiny children too young to fend for themselves, including Ma’am, and steered them out of the dim hut.
They went on foot into the hot, stuffy night without the few possessions they’d managed to accumulate since coming to Fort Gibson, twisting and turning among alleyways and passages between dwellings and huts until they were so far away that Rose couldn’t recognize where they were. Grampa Cow Tom stopped in front of a crooked little logged house, but with a real door. He rapped, and whispered to the woman who answered, using his insistent negotiator voice, until finally she nodded in agreement.
“Only two,” she said, and turned her back, disappearing inside, but she left the door open.
Grampa Cow Tom squatted in front of Rose, eye level, and even in the moonlight, she saw herself reflected in him, that they were both terrified, but each knew to don the mask of courage in defense of those not strong enough.
“Take care of your sister, I’ll take care of your mama. These are freedmen from the Canadian, and they owe me this favor. I’ll come back for you tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Rose, afraid that if she said more, she would break down and beg her grandfather to take her with him, wherever he went. She didn’t want to be with strangers. She wanted Gramma Amy’s warm arms around her, and for Aunt Maggie to get better, and to have enough to eat, and she wanted their ranch back. She wanted Ma’am to come out of herself, even if that meant a scolding. But what she didn’t want to do was disappoint her grandfather.
Rose took Elizabeth by the hand and entered the small hut, without looking back. There were three inside, the woman and two children she held close to her on the other side of the room, a boy and girl, about the same age as Cousin Emmaline and Cousin Lulu. The woman kept her distance, and pointed to the far corner of the room. She offered neither blanket nor food. Rose settled her sister and herself on the floor in the corner and shut her eyes to gather strength.
Rose woke in the morning, unsure of where she was, Elizabeth snuggled up against her, still asleep. The previous night came crowding back, and she bolted upright. A dark woman sat in the opposite corner across the small room, watching her. In the light, Rose saw the woman was Ma’am’s age, small and wiry, with a rag tied around her head and a long dress, stained and dirty, but of sturdy cotton. Her children were still asleep on either side.
“He said he’s coming back to fetch you this morning first thing,” the woman said. Her eyes never left Rose. “This is first thing now.”
Rose shook Elizabeth awake. Her sister started to fuss, but sensed tension and sat up quietly, rubbing her eyes.
Rose was hungry, but somehow this didn’t seem the right time to broach that subject.
“We can wait outside, missus.”
The woman nodded.
She pulled Elizabeth by the hand and led her outside, and they heard a latch catch behind them. Dawn was barely broke, but the air already gusted hot, as if on fire. Rose settled them a few feet away from the hut, squatting in the dirt. Elizabeth didn’t complain, and followed Rose’s lead. They daren’t go back to their own hut, not after Gramma Amy warned them away. If Grampa said he would come for them, Rose knew he would.
Rose and Elizabeth waited for hours until Grampa Cow Tom finally came down the path for them, daylight fully arrived. Rose thought he might be angry at the freedwoman for turning them out, but he seemed too preoccupied. She helped Elizabeth to her feet.
“How’s Aunt Maggie?” Rose asked.
Her grandfather didn’t answer. “We’re going to a new place,” he said.
Elizabeth started to cry.
“Is she dead?” Rose asked.
His face looked like he might lose control again, as he’d done after Granny Sarah died. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “The children took sick in the night too.”
“Where’s Gramma Amy?” Rose felt herself at the edge of something terrible, as if she was a river rising over the banks and yet the rains continued to pelt down. She was afraid she would call Twin. She was afraid she would call Twin and he wouldn’t come. She was afraid Twin would come unbidden and make things even worse.
“All sick are back in our hut, and Amy won’t leave, but I found a new place on a hill for us, away from the hut city. A tent. Your mother is there now, making things ready.”
They followed him blindly, Rose and Elizabeth, trudging up the hill, putting more distance between their old home and the new, without knowing who might still be alive to inhabit the tent on the hill.
By the time Rose saw Gramma Amy again, Aunt Maggie was dead. Both Cousin Lulu and Cousin Emmaline were dead. Gone. Disappeared from this earth.
Several days later, before nightfall, just outside their new tepee on the hill, Rose stood between Grampa Cow Tom and Gramma Amy, and stared at the exodus on foot of all the people leaving the filth of the hut city. Her former neighbors.
At the end of the week, dry-eyed, she watched the settlement she’d called home for the last year and a half go up in flames, at the order of the commanding officer of the post.
Chapter 37
WHEN GRAMPA COW Tom squatted on the mudded ground outside the lieutenant adjunct’s office, Rose did too.
“Take Rose on your rounds,” Gramma Amy had pleaded with him several months back, after the firing of the hut city, when Rose could barely find the wherewithal to stand or sit or wake, every movement a chore, every thought leading back to death and hopelessness. “She rallies for you.”
And so her grandfather often brought her with him when he did his work inside the fort, and those became her best days in this godforsaken place. At first she hardly cared, but now she hungered after these shared days, away from first the tent on the hill, and then their new location near Grand River. Rose considered herself lucky to shadow her grandfather, to be with him, to watch what he did, to pick up some of his langu
Rose considered herself a different person from the raw girl she was before Fort Gibson, worse for wear like her tattered tunic, but tougher, more independent, smarter, and she saw a marked change in her grandfather too. He was outspoken to the military men, less patient, insistent that full-blood Creeks, mixed-blood Creeks, and Negroes all get their due at the fort. And he made great effort to spend time with her, though mostly in silence.
The adjunct finally emerged, in rapid conversation with another military man. Her grandfather scrambled to his feet, but the white man waved him away before he said a word.
“Too busy,” he said. “Supplies coming in.”
Her grandfather trailed the military men, and Rose trailed her grandfather, and from the parapet of the hilled fort, they all watched a caravan arrive below in the valley, a slow and seemingly endless string of clattering wooden wagons and squeaking carts.
Some refugees rode, but most walked, poor souls trudging silently alongside the rattle of vehicles, ankle deep in mud, or forced behind weary supply mules staggering under their load of corn or flour, with a few raw-ribbed horses sprinkled into the procession, almost as stumble-footed as their two-legged companions.
Her grandfather squinted. He told Rose his eyesight was worse since coming to Fort Gibson, and sometimes he saw the world as if through a halo. Rose was thirteen, which meant he was fifty-four.
“Is that Harry?” he asked Rose. She’d not heard so much excitement in his voice since coming to Fort Gibson.
Even at range, Rose recognized her uncle Harry, midpoint in the long queue on his cinnamon mare, with a small Negro girl no more than three or four years of age in front on his saddle. Harry Island was more family friend than blood relative, and she hadn’t seen him for several years, but Harry and her grandfather were closer than brothers. In spite of Uncle Harry living in Kansas and Grampa Cow Tom in Indian Territory, they’d kept their connection through messages sent between forts.
“Yes,” she cried. “That’s Uncle Harry all right.”
“They’re come home from Kansas,” he said.
The escorts were haggard Union military men, many of them African Indians of various stripe pressed to service, and some coarse-haired buffalo soldiers responsible for escorting civilians. Grampa Cow Tom made it his business to know most military men assigned escort detail, in order to understand what supplies came into the fort, and what went out. He used them to gather news from Fort Scott; he used them to pass messages to hold his connection with Harry Island, so they might strategize across the distance how to help keep Negroes alive, whether domiciled at Fort Scott in Kansas or Fort Gibson in Indian Territory.
Harry Island halted while the caravan proceeded at its snail’s pace, and an old woman in a dark head rag claimed the girl, a small child in cloth so worn to shreds, Rose couldn’t tell whether the garment was of a piece or the wrapping of random rags. The way the girl lifted her arms to the waiting woman put Rose in mind of Cousin Lulu, and Rose couldn’t catch her breath. A rush of dread threatened to overtake her. She closed her eyes tight, and forced out all thought of her dead cousin, imagining instead the contours of her grandfather’s wide face, his calm, until the darkness passed and she regained control of herself.
Uncle Harry handed the girl over, and the waiting woman led her off and out of sight toward Grand River, where Rose lived now. Her fourth Fort Gibson home, after the open hillside, after the burned-out hut city, after the tent city.
The escorts neither dissuaded the stragglers nor urged them forward, content to let them orchestrate their own future from here on out. Close to done with this bit of their transport work, they proceeded to the fort on their horses, theirs in better shape than the civilian nags, but still so bony, ribs often visible beneath blanket and saddle. Uncle Harry went at a trot, lighter for the loss of the girl. Between valley and fort, first one group and then another peeled from the caravan, stopping well short of the fort’s gate to search for a resting place in the landscape already crowded with dirty, lousy, half-starved squatters. New arrivals must surely wonder if there were more steady rations of food or clothing or safety at this latest place than the camps in Kansas.
Her grandfather broke for the courtyard and Rose kept close. The scene was chaos, aswarm with military, livestock from the brigade train, sutlers, teamsters, commissary authorities, Indian agents, curious idlers, new refugees, and savvy squatters hoping to pilfer dropped foodstuffs in the midst of such confusion. Her grandfather fought their way through to a position close to the front gate. Some of the arriving party had already passed through, swallowed up into the buildings.
They didn’t see Harry Island anywhere.
“Where’d he go?” Rose asked.
“He’ll turn up soon enough,” her grandfather answered, but his voice betrayed him. He was antsy too.
“Should we make petition rounds?”
“They’ll all be busy logging in supplies and the refugee transfer. We wait.”
Rose couldn’t let go the thought that Uncle Harry was somewhere close. “Maybe Uncle Harry went to find us in Grand River.”
“Then we see him tonight. We’ve no reason to go back with nothing fresh to report or distribute.” Her grandfather found a small space where he could sit, his back against the building. “We sit tight. I’ll welcome new arrivals to Grand River later.”
But Rose couldn’t be still. She ran to the storeroom and back. No Uncle Harry. She ran to the sutler shop and back. No Uncle Harry. In the crowded fort near the stables, Chibona idled in a group of young Cherokee men. This wasn’t the first time, running into him inside the gates. He glanced her way, and she looked through him, her shoulders back and her head held high. He could do her no more harm. She no longer pined for his friendship, nor feared him or his friends, nor sought revenge, nor felt the need for Twin to protect her. Yes, she was a different girl, hard enough to face the likes of Chibona without blinking. Rose had family, and that’s what mattered, the dead spot in her heart sealed over and unavailable to anyone else.
Rose slowed and walked, knowing she was watched, lest Chibona think she ran from him again or thought of him at all. And there he was, finally, Harry Island across the crowded courtyard, riding his broke-down cinnamon mare, the selfsame horse he’d ridden off to Kansas, the poor animal now decrepit.
Harry hollered his old familiar whoop, and waved his hat in the air.
“Brother Cow Tom,” Harry yelled, without regard for stares, though with the din at the fort, he was scarcely heard.
Her grandfather was up and on his feet, leaving Rose to scramble behind him.
Harry had shed all traces of fat, as had they all, his cheekbones sharp in his sunken face, two of his upper teeth missing. He was so dark as to look truly African, small of stature but handsome of face, with eyes like a lizard, heavy lidded and appraising.
He dismounted. No jumping off his horse in a showy flourish like the Harry of old, but a careful dismount, joints a-creak, and a clear favoring of one leg over the other. They hadn’t seen him in more than three years, not since Harry followed Old Gouge Opothleyahola to Kansas and Cow Tom stayed in Indian Territory.
“Brother Harry,” Cow Tom said. “Does my heart good.” He grabbed Harry’s hand in a firm shake.
Harry, unsatisfied with the greeting, caught her grandfather up in a bear’s hug and danced him around the compound. Rose giggled at the folderol.
“Who’s this?” Harry asked. Harry Island spoke with an inconsequential lisp, not enough for him to be considered damaged, but enough to make him overcareful in his speaki
Rose turned shy. “Yes, Uncle Harry. That’s me. Rose.”
Harry reached out and turned her face one way and then the other. “Blamed if it isn’t you after all.”
For the first time in a long while, standing within the warmth of these two men, Rose thought it possible that things might turn to the better.
Chapter 38
“I MADE YOU for an earlier convoy,” Grampa Cow Tom said to Harry Island.
Uncle Harry became serious, his attention turned from Rose toward her grandfather. “They kept me at Fort Scott as go-between till the ragged end. They’re cleaning the camps of Indians in Kansas,” he said. “Seems we wore out our welcome. This is about the last of us, returned to mother country.”
Uncle Harry looked around the fort and beyond to the valley, taking in the running sewage, the tight press of thousands of bodies for miles in each direction, the rank smell of foul air and unwashed humanity. “Still better than Fort Scott,” he pronounced.
“You think it a contest?” asked Grampa Cow Tom, his temper at instant boil. “Suffering is suffering. No need to assign grade.”
Uncle Harry stopped short at this last. He turned his head, and his voice when it came was muffled. “None do well, but some do better,” he said.
Her grandfather shook off his upset and clapped Uncle Harry on the back. “You’ll see soon enough what work needs done here.” He fell silent, giving Harry Island space to right himself. “Where’s Chief Sands? I thought he required you by his side. Specially surrounded by the white man’s English.”
“Took fever the last days on the trail, the hindmost playing out now. I’ve left him to his bed, and resume duty at the morning. Tonight, I’m free to catch up, see what you call home.”