Chapter 10

Olive Augusta Peele, 1909

The valley is bounded on the west by the Buffalo and Potato Hills Mountains, the latter having a sawtoothed appearance against the western skyline, on the north by the Winding Stair Mountain.

—Gower Gomer, 1938. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection.

The thing about the elves is, they ain't elves at all. Maybe I wondered again for a minute when I saw their camp. They live in a big tree that's old as these hills. Its twin trunks grew up side by side till they joined into one. Where the roots push out of the ground, Tula and Pinti and Koi tunneled the dirt and built a pretty good dugout shelter. With dead branches, stripped bark, and cut pine boughs laid over it, the place is real cozy.

Elves in a fairy book would have a house under a tree like this, but these kids used to live in a cabin with their ma and pa, plus their granddaddy and grandmama. Their ma was Choctaw and their pa was part-blood, and the land was theirs from when the government divided up the Choctaw parcels a few years back. The land was hilly and not good to farm on, so their pa took to hunting wolves and coyotes and turning in the pelts for bounty money. Plus, they hunted deer, trapped rabbits, caught fish, and gathered other food from the woods. Sometimes they were hungry a little, but they never did starve.

A sickness came one summer, and the old folks died right off and then later the ma. When they lived with only their pa, a man came and said the judge in the new court had wrote a paper that the three kids couldn't stay with their pa alone, and the man was there to take the kids off to a school, where they could get educated and have good food every day.

Their pa didn't like what the man said, and so he told the kids to sneak off to the woods and stay there while he traveled to Poteau to see about the judge, and maybe get a wife to help keep the family.

That was the last day they ever saw him. The stranger man stayed in their house. For a while, Tula would sneak back at night to take eggs from the chicken coop, and nipi shila jerky from the smokehouse, but the man got a dog, and when the dog barked, the man shot his gun, so the kids ran off. The man and the dog tried to track the kids, but they kept running and walking a far piece, and wound up here at the Twin Sisters Tree. That's what I named this place after Tula told us the story yesterday.

Tula says they see other kids like them sometimes. That spot where Nessa and me held up under the rotten log, and Tula, Pinti, and Koi scared us—it used to be the camp of two brothers who were mixed-blood Choctaw. They taught Tula about getting food from the train and the Good Woman's house. But one day they disappeared.

"Tula says they're gone on the train, maybe. Them brothers," Nessa tells me as we sit together in the morning chill, while overhead the Twin Sisters Tree lifts her branches to a pink sky. "Or the man got 'em." Nessa adds a worried frown.

Tula looks up from picking twigs and leaves out of Pinti's hair and tossing them into our little morning fire. She's already told us that sometimes there's a man at the Good Woman's house, and when he's there, you don't dare go near. He's tried to catch these kids once already. Tula says there's other men around who catch kids, too. She heard about it from those two brothers who disappeared.

The Twin Sisters Tree might look like a storybook, but it ain't one. Hunters roam the valley. Child hunters.

That's why I know Nessa and me can't stay around here long enough to work my plan and find somebody who'd take our six nickels in trade for food and traveling supplies. It's too risky. Tula hasn't got any people looking after her like I hoped, and at the Good Woman's house, the man came home last night.

"Time for us to move on," I whisper to Nessa.

Koi's tummy grumbles, and he grins like it's funny, then while he's got everybody looking, he belches and grins again. "Fesh?" He swims a hand through the air, then brings it to his mouth. I just got him saying fish yesterday evening, and he taught me nvni, which is how the Choctaws say it. We used the hooks and lines from Daddy's rucksack to rig a pole and catch perch, then we ate a right fine supper of three small fish and six fat crawdads, plus boiled eggs and some berries.

"Fish 'n' tr-ain." Tula nods in the direction of the train tracks, then makes legs from her two fingers and walks them down her arm. She circles her chin toward all of us with a big ol' smile. "Fish 'n' tr-ain. Kil-ia!"

Her grin falls when I shake my head. "Nessa and me can't go fishin' or to the train with y'all. We gotta be moving on."

"Fish 'n' tr-ain," Pinti pops out, then slaps a hand over her mouth and giggles like the words feel strange in her mouth. Her and Nessa been cooping up together and chatterboxing every chance they get, making dolls out of twigs with leaves for clothes. "We…go."

Pinti's got we and go down for sure. Between us learning their words and them learning ours, we're getting better at talking already.

"We go!" Koi jumps up and lands like a frog, which fits, since he never holds still. "We go! We-go! We go-oh-oh!"

The sound echoes up through the big tree, and Tula clamps a hand across his mouth. The worry that passes over her only makes me more sure that Nessa and me can't stay here. This place ain't safe for three kids, much less five.

I lean back and grab Daddy's rucksack. "Nessa, you tell them today's our day for moving on, and that's that." I talk slow on purpose, because Tula hears a whole lot more English than she speaks. "Tell them we can't go fishin', but I can leave them a couple fish hooks and lines from my pack, and I'd be awful happy if we could have some matches from their tin, since all ours got wet and ruined. We don't need a bunch, just five or six to get us through a few days."

Nessa sulls up and crosses her arms. She's got herself a new friend and ain't happy to leave. She's never had a friend before, except her sister, Hazel.

"Nessa Bessie, you tell them what I said."

Turning her face away, she pokes her nose into the air.

"Well, I guess you can just stay here…then. I won't miss you one bit. I ever come back this way again, I'll stop in and see how you're farin'." But I picture myself alone in the woods at night. Tales about the giants and the kowi anuka asha, the little people that live under rocks and trees, come to mind. Plus bears, and panthers, and coyotes…and bad men. "That is, if the witches or boo hags or elves don't get you first. Just 'cause these kids ain't black-eyed elves don't mean there's no such thing."

I make a show of opening my pack and sorting out fishing hooks. You mark my words, Ollie Auggie, Daddy whispers in my mind, the first rule of relations with mankind, womankind, horsekind, and any other kind is to get folks to do your bidding by making them think it's their own wants.Every critter looks to its own wants first. No shame in it. It's just what's true.

I dillydally with fishing lines and wait for Keyes Radley's first rule to work itself out, because it will. Daddy was the rightest person I ever knew.

I've poked myself on the hooks, plus Tula has started helping me before Nessa finally speaks up and says our piece. Tula never looks away from the fishing goods. She wants those real bad.

Her voice is soft when she answers Nessa's question.

"She, after we fish, says," Nessa tells me. It takes me a minute to switch the words around. Nessa sometimes lines them up in a different way now, like the Choctaws do.

"Well, all right, but tell her to bring some extra matches along. Once we catch a few fish down at Ship Rock, we'll each take some, then trade matches for fishing lines and be on our way. We best not stay long by the creek with the Good Lady's mister at home." I don't say it, but I've got a trouble feeling about today.

That bad feeling covers me like a shadow while I follow Tula and the other kids back down to Ship Rock for our last fishing trip. Something's not right. We all see that soon enough. The game trail through the cedars is wider than it's been, and once we hit the mud, there's no mistaking hoofprints. Lots of them. Shod hooves and barefoot hooves, both.

Riders have been all around the brush patches, the creek, Ship Rock, and even the sandbar where the kids play. Tula points across the water. The tracks travel up another game trail that leads straight toward the Twin Sisters Tree.

"That ain't good." I'm glad I carried all our things with us, planning to leave out from here. "Y'all can't go back up there. Not for a while anyhow." I grab Tula's arm when she squints in the direction of their camp. "Whoever's riding around here is hunting something…maybe hunting somebody. From up on that ridge, they could see you down at the creek."

We sidle back into cover and sit there, looking and listening. Even Koi is quiet. He blinks at me and holds his tummy, and I know he's starved for some breakfast. We shouldn't have eaten everything we had yesterday.

I try to think on a plan, but I'm hungry, too. It's hard to think when you're hungry.

Tula points off toward the Good Woman's house and makes finger-legs and walks them across her arm.

"We can't go there," I whisper. "The Good Woman's mister is home, remember? Just as likely he's the one been riding around your trails this morning already. What if he circles back to the house while we're over there getting food? He'd catch us and then…" I don't know what might happen then, and I don't like to think about it. "Y'all can't be near that house till he packs up and leaves again."

Nessa tells her all of that in Choctaw, but Tula waves off what I said. Then she makes more hand signs, and the meaning's real plain.

Not all of us together. Just you.

"You want me to go over there? Well, I ain't doing it. No, sir, no, ma'am. Nobody can go there with the man home. You said so yourself."

Tula's mouth puckers, and she snatches the empty flour sack poke that's stuck in my sash, shakes it in her fist. She sweeps a hand in front of her face, does the same to my face, then pinches the lace on my ribbon sash dress and gives it a tug.

"Tr-ain," she says. "Men." She acts out the way the men threw rocks at her but gave me food.

"Like at the water stop," I whisper.

She nods slow, and all the while our eyes stay knotted together.

"I might could." I can't even believe I'm saying it. "Maybe that'd work. I could use my same story from the train." The only trouble would be if Tesco or Gowdy's been by here, but that don't seem likely after what happened at the river. Maybe the folks in the house would even sell me the supplies Nessa and me need for traveling. That's worth a risk, even a big one.

We make a plan for Tula and the rest to go farther down the creek and see if they can find someplace safe for fishing. I'll try the Good Woman's house with my tale of the runaway calico pony, and then we'll meet back here at high noon, but stay hid in the brush, in case somebody's up on that ridge overhead. If everything goes right, which I hope it does, we'll have some food goods to split.

Before we part ways, I hold Nessa's hands and say, "Now you listen at me. You do as Tula says today, all right? And be careful. And if you see any men, run into the woods. You hear?"

"You comin' back, Ollie?" Tears shine in her eyes, and I'm glad to see she doesn't want to part ways with me, after all. Even if she did make a new friend in Pinti, I'm the one who knew her the longest.

"Course I am." I try to sound sure about myself. "I wouldn't leave you, Nessie, okay?"

"Okay, Ollie." But Nessa's shaking her head at the same time.

"I'll be back. Promise."

"Hazel promised, too." A drop runs over her bottom lashes and down her cheek, silvery in the morning light.

It shames me that I never thought about how much she must've missed Hazel these past weeks. Hazel was her sister, and they loved each other.

I wipe her cheek with the palm of my hand, hold it there. "Hazel couldn't help it. She'd never go and leave you behind on purpose." A lump swells in my throat, because even though I don't want to believe it, I know the only reason Hazel would leave Nessa behind is Hazel's dead. "But, Nessa, listen real hard. If something happens—it won't, but if it does—you don't let anybody take you back to Tesco Peele. He is a bad, bad man. You understand? If you ever get caught, you tell them you're Tula's sister. Make up a name, but don't say Nessa Peele or Nessa Rusk, you hear?"

She sniffs and rubs another tear against my hand, and I hope she's big enough to understand all that.

We go opposite ways, till we disappear from each other. Before I leave the creek, I sneak down under the water oaks and wash my face and hands, comb my hair with my fingers, then take out my bonnet and put it on and tie a nice bow under my chin. I smooth my dress best I can and even black my scuffed-up boots with a half-burned stick from under Ship Rock.

Once I look respectable enough, I climb the bank and start through the scrub and brambles. Cottonwood trees pop and rustle along the water, and I feel alone in the wide world, but it's a bad kind of alone. I think about bears and panthers and bobcats and bad men and child hunters.

The more I walk, the more dangerous the plan feels.

"Radleys always figure a way," I say, like Daddy used to. "You are Olive Augusta Radley." That name tastes like honey in my mouth. I'll never be Olive Peele again. I hated that name as much as I hated Tesco for making me use it. He said if I told anybody he wasn't my real daddy, he'd whip me into next week.

Now I can say it all I want. Olive Augusta Radley. Radleys always figure a way. Olive Augusta Radley. Radleys always figure a way. Olive Augusta…

When I step up on the porch and knock, I nearly let those words slip out at the opening of the door. "I'm—" I catch myself, then say the first thing that comes to mind. "Hazel Rusk. Good mornin'! I am so, so very terrible sorry to trouble you…ummm…ma'am…" I stop and grab a breath soon as I see it's her and not her mister. There's a baby on her hip. It gurgles a oatmeal-drippy smile at me. "Oh, good mercy! That is the cutest little…is it a girl? Those blue eyes are too pretty for a boy."

"A…a what…" The woman blinks at me like she'd sooner have expected to see a circus elephant on her porch.

"And those eyelashes. My lands!" My knees go stringy, and my words shake more than I'd like, but I've learned a lot from serving lemonade and tea cakes in Mrs. Lockridge's ladies' parlor. I know all about the chatter women make together. "What's her name?"

"Beau. It's…he's a boy."

I play peekaboo behind my hand with the baby, and he giggles. "Beau! That was my granddaddy's name. What a dear man he was. Straight up and godly as the day is long. Charitable, too."

The woman stretches side to side, looking past me into the yard and trying to figure how in the world I came to be here at this hour of the morning…and why.

Not good to let folks wonder too much,Daddy warns in my head. Wonderin' gets them suspicious, and they start explaining things with their own minds. You tell them what to think. You write the tale, Ollie Auggie. That's how it's done.

"I am so regretful for taking up your time, and I can see that I have interrupted breakfast." I say that last part to Baby Beau, and lean close, and he giggles again. "But I have walked quite a distance, and I'm afraid I am in a terrible fix."

I tell her about my sick mama back at home, and how I was headed to Talihina to get a special medicine for her, and some supplies for my baby brother, and how it fell to me to do it, my father being away working on the railroad. And, yes, I know the way, of course. Why, yes, I have done this before, but this time my daddy's pack pony, which I was riding, got spooked by a copperhead snake and threw me off and ran away with all my traveling provisions, except what's in my rucksack.

"So, I guess as you can see, ma'am, I am in a terrible fix. Otherwise, I would never, ever bother a stranger." I flatten a hand to my chest like the ladies do in Mrs. Lockridge's parlor. "Although I do believe a stranger is only a friend you have not yet made acquaintance with, don't you?" I follow on with a sad face and let my chin quiver like I'm trying not to cry.

It's working, I can tell. The woman looks me up and down, from my good lace boots to my ribbon-sash dress. It's mud spattered and wrinkled, but getting dumped from a pony explains that.

"You poor child." She's got real sweet eyes, sort of a golden-brown color. She's not a comely woman like my mama, with a tiny waist and a face like a china doll. This lady's big built and coarse headed, as Tesco would say, but I catch myself wishing she was my mama. I remember having a mama like this. One with clear eyes that smile at you, steady and strong and kindly. "What's your papa's name, dear?"

"Mr. Keyes Rr-Rusk."

"And where have you come from?"

"Up the valley from Adel. About a day's ride." I spit out the first thing that comes to mind from Daddy's travels. He went to Adel to trade for a horse once. "On a little farm."

"On a farm, but your papa works for the railroad?"

"He does both farmin' and railroadin'." Pay attention to your mouth, Ollie. I've let the story grow so many legs it's running all over the place.

"What does he do for the railroad, child?"

"Puts water in the trains." I make sure not to squirm at all. "And coal."

The woman nods and smiles. One front tooth's crooked sideways, so there's a gap in the middle. "My husband may know him. Mr. Grube is quite involved in the railroad brotherhoods." Quick as a whistle, she turns over her shoulder and hollers into the house. "Mr. Grube, would you kindly come to the door? A girl here needs our help."

Before I can even say not to bother her mister, here comes a man.