Chapter 24

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

My father, O. N. Tucker, practiced medicine around Doaksville for nine years before losing a case excepting those from gunshots and stabbings, which were plentiful.

—Augusta Tucker, 1937. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection, interview by Hazel B. Greene.

"Nessa!" I scream. "Tula!" Around me the day has gone black with rain and wind. I can't see anything, and all there is to do is keep running up the wagon road, farther from Talihina, farther from the woman with the gun. Lightning cracks. Sound booms overhead. I tell myself it's thunder, not shotgun blasts, that nobody would keep chasing us with a storm letting loose.

My legs buckle and I tumble forward, fall face-first, and Skedee turns off the road, dragging me through some farmer's field. Water and mud fill my eyes and ears and mouth as I splash through the furrows, hanging on to the lead line. I choke and spit and think, Am I shot?

Quick as it started, it's over—not lightning and thunder, but the water and mud and bumping across the ground. The rope slacks up. I feel soft, dry dirt under me. A hand clamps on my arm, and I try to fight it off before I notice it's a small hand. Something damp wipes over my eyes, and when I open them, through the haze and the dim, I see Nessa, cleaning the mud off me with her dress hem.

"You okay, Ollie?" she wants to know, but I can't hear her over the thunder and rain. I only see her lips make the words.

Nodding, I grab her and hug her tight, and she hugs me back just as hard. "We're okay," I say against her wet skin. "I'm here. We're okay."

We hang on to each other that way, and I close my eyes against the burn of tears and mud.

When we let go, I look around and make out that we're in a lean-to shed with log walls and a tar paper roof. It's just high enough for Skedee to get under, and he's wedged himself far back as he could go before the pack saddle hit the log rafters. His head's down between his knees, his ribs pumping and steam coming off him. Tula stands by the open side of the shed. Koi and Pinti cling on her skirts while she puts her fingers to her mouth and whistles into the wind. I guess that's how Skedee knew to come in here. He must've heard what I couldn't.

One more look around, and it's plain enough who she's still whistling for. Amos ain't here. I think of the gunshot, and I can't catch my breath.

Tula whistles, and whistles, and whistles, her calls gone in the storm.

Pushing off the ground, I drag myself to my feet, my blue ribbon-sash dress heavy with dirt and water. I tie Skedee to a hay manger on the wall, then sift through his packs, taking out Nessa's coat and mine, plus Daddy's oilskin slicker. The coats hang like tablecloths over Pinti and Koi, and the oilskin would fit two of Tula. Her skin's like ice when I wrap the collar up high on her neck.

Fresh hay sits in the manger, which means this is somebody's cowshed. The farmer will come back in the morning or maybe even when the storm breaks.

We can't stay here.

We can't leave till the rain and the lightning let up.

After checking Skedee's legs, I loosen the pack saddle cinches and rub him down with handfuls of hay. Nessa helps, and then we sit against the wall and huddle close together under the mothy blanket from the trainmen, while our teeth chatter and the rain beats on the tin roof.

I don't know how we fall asleep, but when I open my eyes, my dress is half dry and my drawers are pasted to my skin. Nessa's head lays drooped over in my lap. The shed is black as being down a well, but I feel enough arms and legs to know that Koi and Pinti are curled against Nessa. The oilskin slicker covers all of us, which must be how we were warm enough to stay asleep.

It's so quiet I can hear everybody breathing and the frogs singing outside.

"Tula?" I whisper. The little ones stir but don't waken.

I slip out from under Nessa, then creep all around the shed in the dark, my hands splayed. "Tula? You there? Tula?" Skedee's right where I left him, but Tula's gone. From the open side of the shed, I try to see through a night fog that leaves not a slip of stars nor moon to go by. The one light I can make out is a single yellow flicker. A farmhouse is close by. Somebody has the hearth fires burning.

"Tula?" I whisper again. A cow stomps just a few feet from me. A bull snorts and paws the ground, and I jump back. The stock must've wandered up sometime after Tula left, and then smelled us in their shed and got too spooked to come in. That means Tula's been gone a while. Maybe she sneaked over to the house to see if there was a kitchen garden or a chicken coop with fresh eggs?

Maybe she got lost in the dark.

Maybe she got caught.

I don't dare call out again with that house so close by, so I stand at the door and wait for dawn or Tula to show up. Come morning, those cows will go to bellowing for food and a dry place, and the farmer will come see about them.

We've got to be gone before that happens.

Soon as the first gray light breaks, I hurry to get Skedee ready, wake the other kids, and put the two without shoes up on the pack saddle. A shiver runs through me as I whisper to Nessa, "Watch where you're stepping. Rain like that washes the snakes out of their holes."

A dog goes to barking, and there's no more time. Shaking the oilskin slicker at the cows to scare them away, I tell Nessa to keep close, then I lead Skedee over a corral gate that blew down in the storm and pull him into a trot across the open field. We run through the morning dim, around a pond and down behind the spillway, where we can hide while I figure what to do next.

"Where's Tula gone to?" Nessa's voice seems loud, even though it barely stirs the air.

"I don't know. I'm watchin'." Putting a finger to my lips, I hand her the lead rope, then I climb the pond dam, squat down in the wet grass, and peek over.

At the house, the lamps burn bright, cutting circles in the fog. Hinges squeal, a screen door slams. A man's whistling drifts over the field, a soft, lazy tune.

I crawl forward a little, try to see across the way.

The door slams. The whistling is gone.

Has he got Tula in there?

To know anything for sure, I'd have to get closer to that house. Near enough to hear the voices or see in the windows. I can leave the little kids here, but I hope Nessa is strong enough to keep hold of Skedee.

"Nessie," I say when I get back down to her, "I need y'all to wait real quiet and don't move a bit while I go see if…"

"Tula! Tula!" Pinti whispers, pointing to the road from high up on the pack saddle.

The honeysuckle vines block me from seeing at first, but finally two people melt out of the fog, coming from the town way with a lantern. One's short and skinny, one's tall and big. I know Amos right off, but he's limping and leaning heavy on a stick.

The little kids slide down and run ahead to Tula while Nessa and me work Skedee through the vines and brush.

"Lost y'all." Amos's voice is thick, and he groans with the words. "Had to crawl up in a black haw thicket back down the road. Figure a haw bush ain't the worst place to die. Flowers come sprang, sweet haw berries in fall." He tries a tiny laugh but it ends in a cough and a moan. "Reckon that gun just winged me through the fat, 'cause when I woke, there I was, still upside of the sod. I heard Tula's call, and spotted a lantern light coming through the fog." Even through the dim, I can see him smile at her.

"We best blow out that lantern and move along quick," I tell them, because the only place Tula would've got a lantern was off the porch of the farmhouse. "Amos, we might could get you on Skedee."

"I weigh too heavy for that pony," he tells me, but a whimper comes after the words. "I'll get along all right."

"You let me know if you need it. Skedee's strong."

"I'll do that. But if somebody comes up on us, y'all run. Don't worry about me. Y'all run and git away."

"I don't think anybody's coming after us."

"And you make Tula go, too." He looks hard at me.

"All right."

"Anumpulit issa," Tula whispers, and I know what that means. Stop talking.

"We go," Koi says, then gets his skinny little shoulder up under Amos's hand to try and help. We start out walking that way, and as we pass the farmer's gate, Tula leaves the lantern by the post.

The Old Military Road leads us toward the mountains, but it's hard going. Amos catches a breath each step. Even though we try to walk slow, we have to stop and wait, and stop again. We're through the clear and into some trees before morning sun burns off the fog, but with the light comes seeing that it's not just dry blood on Amos's shirt and pants. He's bleeding heavy.

Tula and me and the little kids go to chasing the spiders off their webs and gathering up the sticky threads to make a poultice. Spiderweb will stop a bleed quicker than anything, keep infection out, and help it heal, too. I guess Tula's mama or daddy taught her that, same as my daddy taught me. Tula had good people to show her things, same's I did. And she loved her people, but then they were gone, just like my daddy and my mama. We're not so different, Tula and me.

I think on that while the sun scatters through the new spring leaves and a breeze stirs the branches. Leftover rain drips down like strings of pearls, and the songbirds wake the day with music even prettier than the Victor Victrola phonograph at the Lockridges' house. Sounds and smells wrap tighter around me with every step. Home's getting closer, but going slows when the road turns uphill at the foot of the mountains. Amos's groans grow deeper, and even all the spiderwebs in the world won't stop the bleed. Finally, he wobbles on his feet and stumbles down onto one knee.

Tula and Nessa get up under his arms, but they're so tiny it's not worth much. Time and again, they fall behind, and I wrestle Skedee to a stop, and wait. That pony's nose is pointed toward the old homeplace, and he's itchy to go. If I could, I'd strip off the pack saddle and ride him up the backtrail Daddy and me used as a cutoff from the Old Military Road. Horse thieves and outlaws traveled that secret trail…and men like my daddy, who lived far from the world of trains, and automobiles, and telegraph lines, and electric lights. One long day's hard climb and Skedee and me could be near our valley, if we went that way. Everything's waiting for us just like it was. Preserves in the cellar, quilts on the rope beds with their soft ticking mattresses, water bucket by the door to run down to the springhouse and dip out all you need. Mama didn't even bring the milk cow and the chickens when we left. She just turned them loose.

Of a sudden, I'm mad at her all over again for making us go. For leaving the cow and the chickens to be eaten by mountain lions and coyotes. For getting tied up with Tesco Peele. For turning to the drink and the powders, for loving it more than she loved me.

I'm mad at that pale, skinny woman with the sunken eyes who stole my mama. No matter how good I was, or how much I begged and cried, or combed her hair and brought clean clothes for her to put on, that woman wouldn't let me have my mama back.

"Get away!" The words bust out of me when somebody grabs my arm. "I hate you!"

But it's only Nessa with wide eyes and her lip trembling because I scared her.

"It's all right, Nessie," I whisper. "I didn't know it was you, that's all."

She points back down the way where the road dips into a gulley. Amos and Tula are too far behind to even see, now.

"He can't go no more, Ollie." Tears spill over her cheeks and run down through the dried mud from last night. "Stop, Tula said."

"We ain't come but a few miles this whole mornin'." I look down the road and think about the hanging valley that seemed so close a minute ago. Of a sudden, it feels a far piece. Too far. "We gotta get back—"

"Home," Nessa finishes like she wants it bad as I do. "Hazel's up there?" she asks, and then I know it's not the hanging valley she's hoping for, it's her sister. She still thinks we'll find Hazel in the Winding Stairs. For a long minute, I want to let her believe it. We could make the climb up the old back trail, just us two. Nessa would be like Skedee, eager and fast.

Holding her face between my hands, I squat down and look in her eyes. "Hazel ain't up there, Nessie. I wish she could be, but she's not. I don't know what become of her. We've only got you and me from now on." I fight the part of me that wants to leave it at that, only two people to worry about. But I know it's not so anymore. "And Tula, and Pinti and Koi, and Amos. That's our family now."

Hand in hand, Nessa and me walk downhill and go sit with Amos and the others under a pine tree. The little ones wander, picking dewberries and the first wild strawberries, while Skedee rests with his packs off, and Tula sets out a meal from the goods Mr. Brotherton and Mrs. Grube gave us. Even after the food and some water from the canteen, it's plain that Amos can't travel anymore. Not today. Not for a while. He'll bleed to death if we don't stop.

Tula and me have to make a new plan. Much as I want to be back in that beautiful valley, there's no going up the mountain till all of us can make the climb together.

Standing in the road, I study on the rocks and the trees and the piled stones the soldiers stacked almost a hundred years ago to build up a wagon path to Fort Smith. I try to figure out exactly where we are. What've I seen before? What's near? Where can we hole up with Amos till he's better?

A mule's bray splits the air, and every thought in my head scatters.

The little kids run for cover, while Tula and me work to get Amos on his feet.

"Y'all leave me be," he whispers. "Y'all run."

"Ssshhh," I say while we help him farther into the thickets. "I know it's hurtin', but you've got to quieten, now. We'll get you hid and…"

Before I can do one thing to stop it, Skedee throws his head up and whinnies loud and long.

"Who's out there?" a voice calls.