Authors: Lalita Tademy
“The government sent him to help us,” said Eugene.
“He came today to help himself. Help himself to our land. Don’t be fooled.”
“He’s an important man. He owns ten thousand acres and lives in Muskogee.”
“Never want what other people have. You never know how they got it,” Rose said.
Eugene didn’t back down, as if his silent witness to this morning’s meeting drained him of his full capacity for obedience. “I don’t belong here,” he said.
Rose’s heart skipped. What did he mean? On the ranch? On this porch? With her?
“Not everybody wants to farm or ranch for the rest of their life,” he said. “That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, Eugene?” Rose asked. “Do you even know? Do you have any idea?”
She fully expected him to withdraw into himself, as he usually did when confronted, but he took a deep breath, and looked her directly in the eye.
“I want to live away from cows and mud and dust and chickens. I want to ride a train headed west. Or east. I want to live in a city, and meet people not knowing who I am or where I’m from, whose first question isn’t ‘who are your people?’ Who don’t peg me Creek or Cherokee, Indian or freedman, cowpunch or ranch hand. I want to sleep long in the morning and stay up with the moon at night, without a thought of a cow needs milking or a crop needs picking or a herd needs running. I want to see something new that man made. More than drinking enough rotgut whiskey to face another day of hard winter, or hard summer, and not use up my praying for rain during drought or sun during flood or calm during tornado. I want out.”
This last rendered Rose mute. This was the most she’d heard Eugene say at one time, and the first he’d said aloud how little he wanted the farm life she had to offer. She’d failed him. Suddenly she knew it true. She wondered if he had shared his discontent with Elizabeth. She stood quiet for a long time before she spoke.
“Land is who we are,” Rose said to him. “Land is our protection, land is our family, land is our life, from the time of Cow Tom. You’ll do what I say. No one sells.”
Eugene picked up the rifle from where she’d leaned it on the
porch rail. He sighted down the barrel in the direction of the bunkhouse, before laying the old gun back to rest. When he looked to Rose again, his face bore such sorrow she could barely puzzle out the man he’d become. In her mind, she still saw baby fat and first steps and a young boy trailing after his brothers.
“How’d we get this way?” he asked.
The question made no sense, but she knew at once what he meant. She understood, but resented the impertinence from one so young and untested. How does anyone come to be what they are? Of necessity. By example. Day by day.
She didn’t answer.
For once, Eugene pressed. “What was he like? My great-grandfather? Cow Tom.”
“He was a great man,” she said.
“I know the things he did. But what was he like?”
Rose remembered the conversation with Kindred in the barn the night the breech calf was born, the same hunger behind the question. She couldn’t answer Kindred then, and couldn’t answer Eugene now. She’d kept the stories so close by now, at first because of the promise, but now something more, that she feared something fundamental within her would break apart if she gave in to this impulse to open the past. Grampa Cow Tom was hers.
“There’s work to be done,” said Rose. “I want you to ride the east fence line today.”
Eugene refused the dismissal. “We each come by our allotment, our hundred and sixty acres, made out to us, separate,” said Eugene. “Each should do what they want.”
“No one sells,” Rose repeated. She wanted to shake him, slap him, make him see what was important. She modulated her voice instead to try reason. “That’s how we stay strong. Your father will tell you the same. But if sell you must, come to family first. Only sell to family.”
Eugene didn’t answer her, and the silence deepened between them. He stood rigid as he stared out at the vastness of the prairie
in the direction where the guardian disappeared, and then with the slightest of shrugs, he left Rose alone on the porch.
Chapter 66
ROSE STAYED CLOSE
to home, as she had for the last six months since the guardian’s visit, tending the ranch and the children. But even in her seclusion, rumors insinuated themselves into their everyday lives as the date approached to lift freedmen restrictions, and the government allowed all citizens other than full-bloods to sell their land allotments. The distasteful memory of the unctuous little man hadn’t completely faded, but with busy season upon them, and so much to do, Rose almost convinced herself they were safe.
She watched Eugene closely, careful to respect his disappearances to see Elizabeth a half day’s ride away. He performed his obligations, a dutiful son, but she detected a new gleam of eye, a more engaged carriage, an unexplained hopefulness Rose hadn’t seen before. He didn’t open up to her as the day he told her of his aversion for the rancher’s life, nor express his dissatisfaction again.
The eve of the deadline, Rose worked herself into such distress about Eugene she put aside her needle and thread and retired early, leaving the older girls unsupervised to clear supper dishes and close up the house for the night. She hadn’t yet changed into nightclothes, and sat on her side of the mattress, fully dressed, as Jake shed down to his long underwear. He sagged onto the bed, tired from a full day branding calves, and pulled the quilt over himself. Still, she couldn’t force herself to begin her evening routines.
“I worry over Eugene,” she said.
Jake opened his eyes. “If the boy wants to go, he’ll go,” he said. “We done all we could. You coming to bed?”
“He might still think to catch the last train to Muskogee tomor
row,” Rose said. “We can’t let him do it.”
“No son of mine would throw in his lot with the ignorant mixed-bloods and liquored-up freedmen the grafters rounded up in the last few days,” said Jake. “We raised Eugene smarter. If he’s daft enough to go that direction, he’ll lose the land sooner or later anyway.”
The set of Jake’s jaw convinced her he’d settled on his thinking. Jake wasn’t a man to turn his back on family, but he didn’t always intuit truth even when directly in front of his face. There was more denial in his words than either acceptance or resignation.
“You need to talk to him. Forbid him. He’ll listen to you. What if he still goes to town? He could give away his birthright for chicken feed.”
“He’s grown, Rose. I was on my own at his age. On my own with no help from anybody, least of all family.”
She’d lost one of her sons. She refused to lose another. “After what happened to Kindred . . .”
Jake stopped her.
“That one is gone, and this isn’t the same. Eugene isn’t the same. He’s older, and smarter. A man has to make his own choices, and be willing to live by them. Have faith in him.”
Jake turned over and soon fell quiet, through with talking. Rose decided to try again in the morning. She changed to her nightdress and lay under the covers, and spent a goodly part of the night listening to Jake’s soft snores before finally easing to sleep.
When morning came, Jake was up and out early, and not long after, Eugene came to Rose.
“I’m going to Muskogee today on the free train,” Eugene told her.
“The sharpers will try to strip your allotment and throw you a pauper on the government for support.”
“I mean to hear the offer,” he said.
“Please. Stand fast. Give up the notion of selling.”
“We can’t keep going round,” Eugene said. “I’m telling you as courtesy, and I’m gone.”
He left her in the kitchen. She listened to his horse’s hoofbeats fade, and for a while did nothing. Finally, she roused herself. She wouldn’t stand by idle while her son made such a serious mistake. Rose wrapped a bit of
sofki
and hardtack in a kerchief, left the older girls in charge, grabbed her rifle, and rode off on her pony toward Jake in the south field.
She found her husband with a ranch hand not far from the corral, tending a crippled calf, and when he looked to her on her pony in the fading light, it was as if she saw him for the first time. His eyes were still an arresting blue, more watery now than when he first captivated her in the Okmulgee kitchen all those years ago, and the crow’s-feet around his eyes were so deeply etched from the sun they seemed a birthmark. He looked puzzled, not understanding why she was there.
“He’s gone for the train,” was all she said by way of greeting, trying to speak in code, not wanting to air their family business in front of the hand, although Old Sam had been with them for over ten years and was most likely as aware of their secrets as everyone else on the ranch.
“Then I’ll go get him,” Jake replied. He gave a few quick instructions to Old Sam, and stood to get circulation back into his legs from squatting so long on the ground.
“I’m going too,” said Rose, and Jake didn’t object.
They didn’t put the horses to full gallop, but rode at a brisk pace for almost an hour through sagebrush and tumbleweed on the main road. The closer they came to town, the more people they saw on the dusty path, whether by horse, by wagon, or by foot, traveling in the same direction. Rose assessed every familiar-looking shape and face, in case Eugene was one of these pilgrims, but she didn’t see him. By the time they came within sight of the Okmulgee train station in the distance, the road was choked with travelers. Rose didn’t know what to expect, not having been to town for several years, since registration for the Dawes Roll. Before they got close, the press of so many people overwhelmed her. Even Jake gave a
low whistle at how many people waited for the special train bound north for Muskogee that grafters chartered.
The town was thronged with clusters of mixed-bloods and freedmen lounging everywhere, on the few benches sprinkled in the station, leaning against the embanked wall, lying in the dirt in the middle of the outlying street, sitting on the planked sidewalks. They were of all descriptions, young and old, agitated and sedentary, ragged and well dressed, but there was one common denominator among those who waited—whiskey. More jugs and bottles than Rose could count were passing from one citizen to another. Liquor sellers didn’t bother to hide themselves, alcohol hawked by both white and Indian grafters providing an endless supply to their recruits and keeping it moving. Many of the men were clearly drunk, whether in quiet stupor or boisterous engagement, so intoxicated they appeared to not know where they were.
They found Eugene’s horse tied to an outlying hitching post.
“We need to find him fast,” Jake said to Rose.
He sounded angry as he tied his horse to the same post and waded into the sea of men, leaving Rose several steps behind.
Chapter 67
ROSE FOLLOWED THE
best she could in her husband’s wake, putting on more of a brave face than she felt. She had been around all manner of ranch hands, rough-hewn and sometimes dangerous. She’d grown up in the midst of competing Indian tribesmen, fighting for the last kernel of corn. She’d served middle- and upper-class Indians, privy to the secret depravities of the well-off, but she wasn’t prepared for this.
They navigated and pushed their way through the men on the platform, many of whom were stinking drunk, falling-down drunk, sleepy drunk, mean drunk. One grabbed at her skirt, and another made lewd, slurred remarks, but for the most part, they’d drunk themselves into relative docility. The grafters among them were easy to spot, usually less inebriated, but not always, jealously guarding their marks, like shepherd to sheep, trying to keep another grafter from poaching their claimed territory, men persuaded to join them on the train ride to sell off their land allotments.
Rose heard Eugene’s voice before she saw him. He stood with a motley assortment of rough-looking Creeks on the far side of the station, swaying, slightly apart, but his voice was loud and argumentative. Rose had seen her son at the jug at the end of a long workday, sipping, the hard edges of his face softened to slackness, but she had never seen her son this stage of drunk. He looked as though he might soon come to blows with a scrappy freedman a
full head shorter but menacing-looking nonetheless. The only other person Rose recognized was Hawkins, the self-appointed guardian who had come to the ranch last year, watching over his collection of recruits.
Rose pointed to Eugene, and Jake strode over with such authority Rose couldn’t keep up.
“Eugene!” Jake called.
Even over the din of the mob scene, Eugene heard his father’s voice, confusion clouding his face as he tried to sort through the familiarity of the sound.
By the time Jake reached him, Hawkins, alert to threat, stepped between father and son.
“Eugene!” Jake repeated, his voice a command. Hawkins put out his hand to stop Jake’s advance.
“He’s mine,” said Hawkins. He let loose a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt at Jake’s feet. “Go find your own.”
Rose arrived out of breath, caught up to her husband at last, and stood beside Jake. She watched the momentary puzzlement on Hawkins’s face as he recognized her and pieced together the connection between the three of them—Eugene, Rose, and Jake. Immediately, Hawkins smiled wide, a fawning gesture, and put his hand out in greeting.
“We haven’t met, but your son agreed to come to Muskogee with me,” he said to Jake.
“No he won’t,” said Jake. He didn’t extend his hand, and Hawkins’s smile faded, his arm dropping limply to his side. Jake turned instead to Eugene, who watched with a certain amount of uncomprehending dispassion. “Come on home now, Eugene,” Jake said.
“He’s committed,” said Hawkins. “He’s coming with me.”
Jake ignored him. “Come now, Eugene,” he said, and like an obedient child, Eugene slowly separated himself from the throng of men in his circle. The freedman he was arguing with was so little invested in their squabble that, glassy-eyed, he dropped to the dirt and watched too, as if relieved to be off his feet.
“He’s staying,” Hawkins said. “He’ll be back after he signs, at midnight.”