Citizens Creek (42 page)

Gramma Amy handed Eugene back to Rose. “We are family still. This wasn’t easy to decide, what was best for the child. But Elizabeth can still see Eugene.”

Rose nodded. “After another six months,” she said. “As agreed.”

“She is mother,” Gramma Amy said. “And sister. Those can’t be forgot.”

“How could I forget?” Rose said bitterly.

Now her grandmother nodded silently. She limped toward Elizabeth, and led her to the wagon.

“I’ll fight for him, Rose,” said Elizabeth. “And I’ll never give up. I wronged you, and I’m sorry, but you’ve turned hard and cold. Eugene deserves better.”

Rose ignored her sister, as she had for the last few months, pretending she wasn’t there at all. Silence was all she had to wield. She promised herself to never speak to Elizabeth again.

Elizabeth stared over her shoulder, not once taking her eyes from the bundle that was Eugene. Not when Amy flicked the rein for the horse, not as they disappeared from sight of the ranch.

The entire business hadn’t taken but a small part of the morning. There were animals to feed, meals to prepare, gardens to tend, children to mold, ranch hands to monitor. Jake was on a cattle drive, and the everyday doings of the ranch fell to her.

She fed Eugene first, in the same rocking chair Elizabeth vacated. He slapped his hands against the nippled bottle she fashioned, unhappy with the blend of cow’s milk and honey of his new diet. He was fussy, expecting his mother’s smell and his mother’s milk, but not inconsolable. He finally sucked at the substitute in
defeat and fell once again into a drowsed sleep, succumbing to her will.

Let the rest of the ranch wait, Rose thought. The regular chores went undone as she acclimated Eugene to his new life. To his new mother.

Chapter 59

A FREAKISH AFTERNOON
sun beat down on the prairie as if in full of summer, though the season registered only late spring, the ranch’s busy season for calves, colts, and fawns. The glare was intense and the air so still and hot that even the littlest ones, usually afflicted with too much energy, kept rooted, neither breaking rank to tug at Rose’s skirt nor to bedevil one another. They sat cross-legged in the shade, their sweat-drenched backs against the wall of the barn, watching their older brothers and sisters.

The centennial would soon be upon them, one century playing out and replaced with another. Rose tried to tease out her future, and found she couldn’t guess what 1900 would bring, whether it would be better or worse for her family. She told herself the transfer of century was nothing but a date, one day’s slip to the next, but anyone could smell the change riding the wind sure as dust following stampede. If Jake weren’t gone on a drive, he’d reassure her. She wished him home.

“I set up the cans, Mama Rose,” Eugene said.

Eugene was tall for almost nine, but no matter his desperation to bridge the gap between himself and Jacob and Kindred, to his older brothers he was merely a child, relegated to picking up the tin cans they shot off the fence during Wednesday target practice, someone to shoo away if he tried to tag along after them for too long.

“All right,” Rose said, “Jacob first.”

Rose had yet to get used to the invasion of the last couple of years, so many unfamiliar faces, mostly scruffy white men come to Indian Territory to claim what they now called unassigned land, stopping briefly for a night in the barn or a bit of food or water before pushing on, strangers setting their sights too close to Indian land. These settlers had a look about them, determination edged with entitlement, forcing her to mindfulness of all she and Jake had, as well as what could be taken from them and given to others. The talk of power struggles within tribes, between tribes, and between tribal governments and Washington unsettled her. But short of flood or tornado, regardless of a merciless sun in a cloudless Oklahoma sky or a parade of humanity traipsing across their land, Rose refused to cut short the regular Wednesday lesson behind the red barn. Her barn. Her ranch.

“Take your time,” Rose said to Jacob. “Find the can in your sight and pull steady.”

Jacob hitched up his trousers, squared off, took rapid aim between each shot, and hit only two cans. He shrugged and deposited the spent six-shooter into Rose’s hands.

“You satisfied for Kindred besting you again?” she said.

Rose’s trick of playing to the competition between the two brothers had become less effective of late. The boys were twelve, Jacob and Kindred, as close as twins in their early years, but that bond had begun to noticeably fray.

“Who’s good at the gun isn’t necessarily good where it matters. Or mayhaps a
gen-u-ine
Indian’s aim is better. Ma’am.” Jacob ambled toward the shade, unapologetic.

Her son perched on the ragged edge of sass, but Rose held her tongue. It was just too hot. She shook her head at her too-charming, too-bright son, willing to work hard at things that interested him, but almost impossible to engage in what did not.

She signaled Eugene with a wave of her hand. The boy took off at a trot and scooped up the cans his older brother managed to hit,
and placed them upright along the split-rail fence alongside Jacob’s misses. Six cans, six tries for each child.

“Kindred.”

Kindred, shirtless, wore a breechcloth, buckskin leggings attached to his hip belt, and moccasins. His hair usually fell straight downward in a braid almost to his waist, decorated with feathers, shells, and strings, the sides of his head shaved, but today, he donned his deerskin-strip turban. Rose noticed a new indigo owl tattoo on his forearm.

Rose handed Kindred the pistol without comment. She no longer tried to coax him in his dress, nor did she have instruction for him on Wednesday afternoons. He didn’t need her advice to improve. And he didn’t want it.

With detached calm, Kindred took careful but easy aim, and squeezed back on the trigger lock. One can after another flew off the fence, until there were six lying on the ground, a new rent in each.

Kindred checked to make sure Jacob acknowledged his feat, but Jacob stared purposefully elsewhere.

“
O mvl kv, Ecke
,” Kindred said, handing Rose the pistol.

“English,” Rose warned.

“Faultless, Mother.”

There was something in his tone Rose didn’t like. What was it in the air, for her sons to border on such disrespect? Her best milking cow, due any time, had been off feed for two days, and she couldn’t shake her foreboding about the impending birth of the calf. And last week, the entire crop of cucumbers in her garden quit blooming, suddenly, the leaves turning an ugly yellow before shriveling and falling to the ground.

Eugene retrieved the cans. “I want a turn too,” he complained.

Rose had been at the business of educating her children long enough, mindful of contrary natures as well as abilities, to understand that short-lived desire and long-term persistence were two
entirely different things.

“This is no game,” Rose answered, as much for the benefit of the younger children listening as for Eugene. “Everyone learns to shoot a gun to protect the ranch. Eugene is still too young, but his time comes next year. When he’s ten.”

Eugene poked out his lower lip. Rose winced at the stab of recognition of Elizabeth in his features. She’d grown up with that look, a sullen expression her sister assumed when she didn’t get her way. Seeing that mirrored in Eugene reminded her of too many things best forgotten. Rose shot Eugene a mother look, and he quickly straightened up his face and ducked his head, not daring to lift his eyes to meet hers as he set the cans up again. He was still malleable, fearful of her disapproval. If only she could keep them all that way.

She called Laura next, also an excellent shot. Her eldest was as conversant with pistol and rifle as with a needle. Rose mechanically reloaded the pistol for her daughter, and watched Kindred and Jacob, standing side by side, not quite facing each other. If this had been just a year ago, they would be banded together, in unison against the world, whispering secrets or without words, communing in a code of their own making that didn’t include anyone else. But today, they stood apart, almost as if strangers.

She allowed all the older children their turns, then released them to their farm duties, pulling Eugene to the side.

“Take the pony. You be back home before the thick of choring tomorrow morning. Hear? That means setting out from Gramma Amy’s ranch before dawn.”

She couldn’t bring herself to mention Elizabeth’s name. She’d had to agree to Eugene’s time with his other mother, but she didn’t have to acknowledge her sister aloud.

“Yes, Mama Rose.”

In spite of the heat, she finished up the afternoon lessons with the smaller ones, guiding them in spelling out their letters or recit
ing their sums. Rose checked the cow, already separate from the herd. She led her to the barn, slowly, before the animal could lie down in the field, and settled her in a stall. She expected the calf by morning, and set off to the kitchen to oversee her daughters in preparing supper.

Chapter 60

THE HOUSEHOLD QUIETED,
supper finished, the hands returned to the bunkhouse, dishes sudsed and towel-dried, the little ones already in bed, and the girls busy at their needlework. Jake was due home tomorrow. Rose missed him, his physical presence, his easy domination of the hands who preferred their orders coming from a man. Rose decided to make one last check on the cow before turning in.

“Kindred,” she ordered, “come with me.”

As hot as the day had been, once the sun disappeared, the air turned cool and a howling wind kicked in. Rose wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders and handed Kindred the lamp to light their way to the barn.

As soon as she pushed open the wide barn door, she heard slow, heavy breathing. Kindred affixed the lantern to a hook on the stall’s hardwood post while she determined what stage the labor took.

“Cow’s still standing,” she said to Kindred. “A while yet.”

To be safe, Rose shoveled clear an area of manure and led the animal there. The cow looked at her, eyes glassy with dismissal. Most cow births required no human intervention, the mother taking the natural course, but Rose worried over this one, for good reason or no she wasn’t yet sure. She settled herself on the milking stool in the corner. Kindred sat on a bale of hay, his legs crossed over each other. Just today, between shooting practice and supper,
he’d found the time to add another crude indigo tattoo on his right leg, this one of a vine wrapping round his shin. She made a mental note to assign him more to do.

“Why you so set on dressing that way?” asked Rose.

“This is the way Creeks dress,” said Kindred.

“Don’t forget we’re a little of this and a little of that,” said Rose. “Even most of the full-bloods save the turban and the rest for ceremony. You and me, we think the old way, but you the only one who dresses to it.”

His face betrayed nothing, and they lapsed into silence, save the loud rhythm of the cow’s breathing. Despite the flickering gas lantern, only the fusty stink of manure and disturbing eddy of her mind kept Rose awake. Robbed of chores, and confined with a sullen son, she let her thoughts turn dark. She should have brought embroidery, something to occupy her hands. A crush of worry stole up. She had responsibility for ten children, with her childbearing years apparently not yet done. She and Jake had a fifteen-hundred-cattle ranch to manage, and crops to bring in, and smallpox to guard against, and brutal weather of one type or another always descending on them full force, never safe to predict.

She’d almost forgot Kindred was there, when he spoke.

“Why can’t they leave us be?”

“Who?”

“White boomers.”

The last century had brought blessings, overall, that was certainly true, but not without severe setbacks along the way as Jake took risks to expand the herd and make improvements to the ranch, spreading ever outward on tribal lands along the Canadian River. More cattle, more hands, more fencing, more mouths to feed. More. But now there were white boomers and others from outside the nation, pushing steadily into Indian Territory, laying claim to land supposedly set aside for tribes. Land appetite by noncitizens was unquenchable. The governments, both United States and
tribal, forced themselves more and more into their lives.

“We aim to keep living on this land,” Rose said.

“They’ll come after the freedmen first,” said Kindred. “There’s nothing you can do.”

She studied her son in the lantern light, this pale man-child struggling. The boy needed grounding, something gone missing in him, always trying to out-Creek the full-bloods. Rose wrestled with the notion of sharing one of Cow Tom’s good stories with Kindred, here in this barn, tonight. Stories she’d withheld for years. The tale of how her grandfather bought his freedom might spark Kindred’s pride in their family. Or Grampa saving his mother from slavers. Or how he gave an untested girl the courage to shoot a gun at his funeral, and convinced her she could take on anything.

Kindred knew of his great-grandfather by name and reputation, of course, but possessed no sense of how Cow Tom gloried in all parts of himself, Creek and African. All black Creeks knew Cow Tom signed a treaty to protect the freedmen. That he was a chief. Should she describe more than the man of public legend? Break the promise? A story might help Kindred find his way.

“No,” said Rose. “There’s always something can be done. One man’s determination can thread the needle for all that come after. Your great-grandfather was such a man.”

Kindred pulled himself erect on the bale, spine straight. He barely breathed, his surly mood suddenly evaporated. He stared at her, waiting.

Rose couldn’t decide how to begin, where to start. The image leaped to her mind of a black Seminole brave, dead in the Florida swamp, her grandfather’s doing, and the silence grew long.

The cow suddenly gulped at the air, a startling sound, her sides caved, labor finally started.

“Run get a bucket with water from the pump and a bar of lye soap,” Rose ordered.