Cherokee America, page 21
Connell started crying. His chest convulsed. He couldn’t keep from making a noise. He sobbed. He kept on rocking. The sobbing delayed his coming, but relief oozed out of every pore of his body. He gasped for breath. His penis was bursting. It felt four times its natural size. Connell wanted to be so deep in Florence that he’d disappear. She’d be as wet as the river. He’d drown. He wouldn’t care. He wanted to go that way. He wanted to come. He wanted to come. He wanted. He wanted. Wanted. Wanted. Then he wanted to get his breath. He bent over the saddle and sobbed.
The Scent of Pine Needles
Bert and Ame didn’t realize it was late until Sanders rolled onto his side and started snoring. They took the hint, got up, and whispered their thanks. Nannie said, “Hold up,” stepped into the dark, and stepped back with two sticks. She gave one to each boy and told them to beat the ground to scare the snakes on their walk. And she invited them back. She didn’t know that Bell had told Sanders he was fairly sure the Vann boys were their aunt Peggy and uncle Alex’s great-grandchildren. And that their cousin Ellis was probably the boys’ grandfather. But Nannie had her own opinion on orphans. Caring for them evened things out.
So Bert and Ame left the Corderys’ feeling full in their stomachs and hearts. They walked the lane in the dark contented, not talking. Ame thought first of their fishing. Then his mind drifted to carving a slingshot, becoming a better shot than Coop. Bert’s thoughts were attached to Jenny. She’d caught his attention in the way girls will, and he enjoyed his mind roving into new fields. They walked on, each lost in his own thoughts, Ame in front, until they were close enough to the Singers’ house for its outline to emerge from the dark. Ame said, “Look yonder, ’round the house.” He pointed with his stick.
Bert said, “They’re doing sompthing.” He came even with Ame.
“Ya reckon?”
“Yeah, I reckon.” Bert gave Ame an elbow to the shoulder.
Ame stepped back. “Yer a genius. Can ya predict the weather?”
Their conversation was about who could predict what, until they heard the banjo’s low, lonesome sound. Bert’s mind went to the ferry. He hoped the hand he’d ask to mind it was still on the job, not listening to the music. He imagined the ferry being cut loose and stolen. Ame said, “I bet Mr. Singer’s dying.”
When they got to the group, one of the hands confirmed Ame’s suspicions. Bert took off towards the river. Ame found a place on the ground. He rested his head on his arms. After a short time, Bert rejoined him. He’d picked a Cherokee to watch the ferry, a man who’d rather be alone near water than with company near dying. They listened to the banjo with the rest of the men until Andrew started screaming so loudly that music didn’t seem right. Ame took off to the ferry then, but Bert stayed with the men.
By dawn, Andrew was too worn out to yell anymore. His breathing turned to a rattle. Check was awake in a straight chair at the side of his bed. Hugh was curled against the footboard, Connell sitting on the windowsill, and Otter, Paul, and Clifford tangled in sleep on the cot. The hands, Bert included, had moved up onto the porch to sleep on the planks. Most had their hats pulled over their eyes. There was a chorus of snoring. Two hands sat up, scratched, and stretched.
Hugh suddenly lifted his head. “What’s happening?”
“The fluid’s built up in his lungs.” Check got up and lit another pine candle. She extinguished a nub.
“Should we do anything?” Hugh asked.
“You could get off the bed and make it easier on him,” Connell spoke from the window.
Check looked at each of her eldest boys. Her left eyelid closed slightly.
Hugh grabbed a bedpost, slid his good foot to the floor, and hopped to a crutch. He said, “I’m gonna relieve myself.” After he left, Connell took a position at the foot of the bed. Wrapped his arm around a post. “Mama, let me get us some help. Doc Howard’ll be up by now.”
Check shook her head and sat back down.
“How ’bout Aunt Alabama?”
Check shook her head again. “No need to impose on folks. They’re busy.”
“She wouldn’t mind coming. Neither would Doc.”
“There’s nothing to do but wait.”
Connell hesitated, but turned back to the window. He’d waited in the barn until he thought there was no trace of tears on his face. And, except for lack of sleep, he felt better than he had in a while. However, he wanted to do something. His mother would try to do it all by herself.
Check folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. She tried to breathe in only the pine scent of the candles. The smell of the disease had grown sordid, but she’d tricked her nose into ignoring it by recalling the forest around her parents’ home. It’d been filled with pine, cedar, and spruce. As a girl, the strong odor of evergreens had protected her against the cold of the winters. She recalled that smell and that feeling. Then she drifted into remembering, one by one, the faces of her mother, sisters, and brothers. Her mother had been so dark, she’d looked young even when she wasn’t. Her three brothers were dead. So was her only sister west of the Mississippi. Her other two were in Tennessee. She hadn’t planned on being widowed this far away from them. Really, once the War was over, she hadn’t worried about being widowed at all. She wanted to cry, and would’ve if the boys hadn’t been with her. She thought about going upstairs, closing the door, and sobbing at her dressing table. But if she did, she would be heard. And she didn’t want to leave Andrew’s side for a minute. She wouldn’t have him much longer. She wouldn’t have him again.
Preparing for the Dying
When Connell finally escaped to Fort Gibson, he first went to the carpenter’s shop. In the doorway, trying to sound normal, he said, “Rain’s on its way.” The carpenter, Louie Glad, watched the weather as closely as anyone. “Hope so,” he said, and wiped his hands on his apron. He added, “Ya look like ya been rode hard, Mr. Singer. Have we lost yer pa?”
Connell shook his head. “No, but it’s not looking good.”
Glad pursed his lips, folded his arms, and looked down. He was a burly man of medium height and undistinguished in appearance, except for a purple birthmark on his forehead that he covered with a shock of hair and a pleasant personality. He said, “How’s yer mother doing?”
“She hasn’t slept. I’m here to take care of her business.”
Glad nodded. Nobody in the Nation would place a firm order for a burying box before a person actually died. Connell’s comment edged up to that line. Coincidentally, Glad had recently finished a fine cherry coffin. He said, “How’s yer brother?”
Connell bristled. He wanted to examine Glad’s face to determine his motivation. But was afraid his eyes would be drawn to the mark. He looked instead at a wall of saws. The carpenter was white, a teetotaler, and a churchgoer. If any man in the district didn’t know what Hugh had done, it would be Glad. Connell shook his head. “He’s all right. Full of himself.”
Glad recognized he’d offended Connell. But he didn’t know how. He said, “I hear that crazy Creek shot him. It’s a shame.” He was trying to be pleasant.
Connell looked straight at him. “You wanta make something of it?”
Glad blushed almost to the hue of his mark. He showed his palms. “Mr. Singer. Ya don’t seem like yerself. Yer upset about yer daddy. I know. We got ever’thing covered we can.”
Connell realized his mistake. And knew he wasn’t himself. He waved a hand to swipe the blunder away. “Sorry. I haven’t slept.” He turned on his heel, passed his tethered horse, and walked briskly towards Nash Taylor’s store. He was as knotted up as a calf roped for branding. He needed to find Florence. To show her how miserable he was. To get some pity from her. He was so tired his dick wasn’t standing up. He just wanted sympathy.
Nash was dipping sugar from a sack. Connell touched his fingers to his hat and walked to the back. There, he pretended to be interested in a wall of holsters. He didn’t want to talk to a soul except Florence. Sometimes she helped women decide on cloth. Sometimes she showed them gloves or hats. He cut his eyes this way and that. But he saw only Jim Murray carrying a feed sack out the door. Connell suddenly felt grumpier. He was wallowing in irritation when Nash came up, put a hand on his shoulder, and asked, “How’s it going?”
“Mama sent a list.” Connell pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
Nash looked the list over. It was four times what the Singers usually ordered. It included a length of black cotton. The paper shook slightly in Nash’s hand. He read it again from the bottom up. He cleared his throat, turned away, and started gathering the items closest to where they were standing. Without looking back, Nash cleared his throat again. He said, “Miz Taylor’s been wanting to go on out to the bottoms.”
Connell lifted a holster off the wall. Mrs. Taylor was the last person his mother would welcome seeing. He rubbed his thumb over the leather. He rubbed it again.
“She thinks highly of your parents,” Nash added. “She was thinking about taking Florence with her.”
Connell put the holster back on the rack. Ducked his head and palmed the back of his neck. “Mama won’t let me ask anybody for help. But I wouldn’t wanta stymie Mrs. Taylor.”
When Connell got to the post office, he walked in on Puny and a fullblood sorting letters. The fullblood grunted and went back to poking envelopes into slots. Puny said, “Ya look like hell.”
“I feel worse than that.”
A sinking in Puny’s chest slid all the way to his stomach. Other than Ezell, Mr. and Miz Singer were his oldest connections around. From the looks of Connell, Mr. Singer was about to be finished. Puny felt a flash of regret. The flash melted into guilt. As soon as he’d declared to Ezell, Mr. Singer’s father had offered him good work. But it’d been Mr. Singer who’d taken him over, and who’d talked with him in the late afternoons about what everybody called “the Negro question.” About how it would turn out. Mr. Singer had been the first white man Puny’d ever had a real conversation with; one about ideas and feelings, not just, “Do this, do that.” Puny wanted to tell Connell. But the fullblood was there, and Puny didn’t know how to explain it in a way that would convey how those talks made him feel. How they reassured him that white people had red blood, too. That there was a chance of a brighter future for all, no matter their color. That there was hope, someday, people would get along. Instead, he said, “I’d like to see your papa ’fore he passes.” He handed Connell his mail.
Connell shuffled it. Two letters from his aunt Elizabeth in Tennessee. A bill from a store in St. Louis. He looked up. “You can risk it if you want. I don’t know that Ezell’ll even notice. She’s awful busy.”
Puny’s mouth turned down. And Connell saw he’d made another mistake. He, too, was stabbed by guilt. He’d tell Puny he had female problems, that women were beyond understanding. But he couldn’t admit he couldn’t get laid. He kicked the counter with the toe of his boot. He had, in the past, told Puny he’d done the deed. Told him about a girl over in Tahlequah, at the Seminary. Described her in detail. But he’d made it all up. He wondered if Puny knew. He tapped the letters on the countertop to erase that thought from his head. And it went. He had bigger worries. He was in genuine grief, and he recognized the same in Puny. He said, “Come while Papa can still recognize you.”
Puny wiped a hand over his mouth. “I’ll ride out tonight.”
From the post office, Connell walked to the Bushyheads’ house. The back door was closed. He knocked below a knot he’d often thought of as the face of a raccoon. Nobody answered. He knocked again. He hadn’t seen anyone on the front porch; Dennis and Alabama evidently were out. He waited, trying to decide what to do. He settled on telling Puny to ask Alabama to come out to the bottoms when she came back. As he turned, the door cracked. A strip of Alabama’s face appeared in the opening. Connell took a step back. “I didn’t mean to bother you, Aunt Alabama.”
“You’re never a bother, Connell.” Alabama opened the door wide enough to reveal her whole head. But she didn’t invite him in.
So he didn’t know what to do next. He looked down at his feet and up again. “I was just at the post office.” He waved his mail. “Thought I’d say howdy.” Alabama looked paler than usual. And was in a robe rather than a dress. It suddenly crossed Connell’s mind that Alabama and Dennis had been having relations. He took another step back. He held his mail to his forehead. He wished he could hide his entire face. He stammered.
Alabama said, “Are you feeling poorly, Connell?”
“No, no, not me! How ’bout you?”
Alabama shook her head. “Nothing to speak of. Is Check ready for me?”
“Mama won’t say. You know how she is.”
Alabama nodded. “Don’t tell her you’ve been here. I’ll be out after the rain.”
Rain beat hard on Connell’s hat and back by the time he crossed the Military Road. It also beat hard on Check’s tin roof in the bottoms. It was so loud on the summer kitchen’s roof that it sounded like Indian rattles. But neither the storm nor the deathwatch dampened Jenny Cordery’s mood. In fact, the turbulence of the weather heightened it. She stood at the door and watched pools of water form in the grass, crater the path between the kitchen and house. Lightning cracked in the sky. The wind sounded like the river. Jenny’s heart raced. The wild weather added to her belief that life had suddenly turned exciting, and was likely to stay that way. Bert was the best-looking, strongest, funniest boy on earth. Her parents and brother had taken to him like he was a colt with a star between its eyes. His little brother wasn’t bad, either. He watched everything Coop and her father did. They could all be friends. When she married Bert, they could all live together. Jenny saw that vision in a puddle close to a steppingstone.
Lizzie said, “You better git away from that door.”
Jenny turned only her head. “Huh?”
“Git away from the door. That lightning’ll fry ya like fatback.”
Jenny took a step back into the kitchen.
Ezell was at the fireplace, stirring stew in a hanging kettle. She dipped up a spoonful, blew, and tasted. She didn’t know how word spread so fast in the Nation. When the rain let up, people would descend on the farm from all directions. And they’d roost just like big buzzards in trees. Even though most would bring baskets of food, they’d all expect to be fed. She looked towards the stove and said, “The cornbread’s ready to come out. The skillet’s heavy. Let’s do that together. Get the gloves.” She was talking to Lizzie.
They pulled a large skillet from the oven. Set it on an iron trivet on the table. They pulled out another. Set it next to the first one. Ezell said, “As soon as these cool, we’ll use ’em for biscuits. Can’t be slighting people.”
Jenny smiled to herself. She loved biscuits and rarely got to eat them. Her mind leapt forward to sneaking one when nobody was looking.
Connell’s deerskin poncho was treated with oil. But he was wet and muddy when he got to the barn. He led his horse to the stall next to his favorite saddle. He took his hat off first, slung it two or three times, and set it on a post. He pulled his poncho off over his head, also flapped it two or three times, and hung it on a hook to dry. Then he took his saddle, the blanket under it, and the bridle off his horse. He settled them apart, thinking he’d need to soap and oil the leather as soon as he could. He was exhausted, in need of some comfort, and aware of the other saddle on the sawhorse just beyond the partition wall.
He tried to shake it out of his mind like he’d shaken the rain out of his hat and poncho. He picked a brush off the ledge of the stall and commenced to stroking his horse. He talked to her. Tried to keep one part of his mind off his father’s dying, the other part off the saddle in the next stall. During a storm, men sometimes hung around the barn; Connell knew that. He didn’t want to get caught with his pecker hanging out, or lodged between the saddle and the blanket, or getting stroked in any way at all. He brushed and brushed, trying to rid himself of even the notion of looking over into the next stall. He tried to concentrate on the sound of the wind blowing through the boards of the barn, on the rain hitting the tin of the roof.
But though his ear was tuned to the storm, the longer the strokes he made on the side of his horse and the steadier the rhythm of his arm and his hand, the larger the bulge grew in his pants. He held the bulge against his horse’s stifle. He rubbed it up and down, just a little. He was trying to reach the top of the rump to brush it, so it was only natural to be against his horse, he told himself. But the animal was warm and hairy, and, really, his friend and boon companion. If he just unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his pecker, he could get some relief without going over to the next stall, without being anywhere in the barn he didn’t have a reason for. It could all be over in a flash. He was brushing with his left hand, so unbuttoning wasn’t difficult. His dick sprung out. He took his hand off and let the movement of his brushing carry his penis through the short hairs of the horse. And that’s what he was doing when Hugh said, “I didn’t know you were so fond of that animal.”
Connell lunged at him. Hugh tried to raise his crutch. But it caught in the leather of his poncho. Connell batted it down. Hugh stumbled, and swung his other crutch. It caught Connell on the back of the neck. Stunned him. Connell bent over, lunged, and tackled Hugh around the waist. Hugh tumbled to the ground, Connell still attached. Both crutches fell away. Connell climbed on top of Hugh so that he was sitting on his stomach. He drew his right fist back. But his pants were loose and his dick standing between them, over Hugh’s chest. Connell looked down and saw it. He saw Hugh red in the face, struggling, his jaw clenched.
Had Connell been a different kind of man, he might’ve held Hugh’s wrists to the ground and done something he would’ve regretted for the rest of his life. But Connell was a straight shooter all the way around. Instead, he crumpled and rolled off his brother. He lay on the floor, put his head in his hands. The first thing he said was “Don’t tell Mama.”
