Chapter 26

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

A brisk traffic grew up in "dead claims" land that had become alienable through the death of the allottee.

—Angie Debo, 1940, And Still the Waters Run.

"Where'd you get this from?" I pick up the book after it slips through a hole in the poke sack and lands in the dirt of the Old Military Road. "And what'd you mean to do with it? Because we ain't using book pages to start our campfires, that's for sure." Two weeks now we been holed up in a broke-down dugout Daddy once told me some Frenchmen built under a rock cliff while hunting for silver mines. Every single day since we got there, I've wished we would've all kept quiet when we heard Dewey Mullins yell from the road, Who's out there?

But Amos knew Dewey's voice, and he called right out, "Help me, Dewey!" like they were still best of friends. Then here came Dewey with a crooked old man on a skinny white mule, Dewey riding behind the saddle. The only good thing was they weren't the law, and they did help us scout for Daddy's old dugout camp. Without the mule, we never could've gotten Amos moved there.

The old man is addled and mostly can't remember somebody's name from one minute to the next, but he and the mule, named Milk, are both gentle and wouldn't hurt a fly. Dewey said the man stole the mule and escaped from the Confederate Soldiers' Home, where his family had put him out to pasture. He was headed back to the Winding Stair to look for his true love, a Shawnee-Cherokee girl named Angeline, because this is where he left her during the War between the States.

The man's name is Gable. No mister about it; just call me Gable, he says every time he forgets he knows you. He's half deaf and goes around our camp singing songs like "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and telling stories about the old days. Dewey says that Gable carried secret papers in the war and knows where all the Confederate treasure is buried, and that's why the old man is really headed into the mountains. Dewey says Angeline ain't a lady but a stash of gold and silver.

But Dewey says a lot of things.

"Hush up talkin' so loud!" he growls at me when I snatch that book from the dirt. "What if that July Joyner gang comes along the road and hears you?"

"Don't say that name," I whisper, because just speaking it might bring bad luck. July Joyner and his gang of cutthroats have stole, burned, horse thieved, and now shot a man and committed depredations on the man's wife and daughter. Word is all over Talihina.

I wave the book in Dewey's face. "I know how to listen out. I ain't stupid. But you are, for stealing, because that's the only way you'd get a book. You're supposed to be working, not stealing. Find work in town. That's the plan we voted on during the council meeting…us older ones go make money till Amos heals enough to get up the mountain."

"I didn't vote on that part."

"It's your own fault you ran off mad." I walk faster because I'm still sour about the council. Dewey was the reason I didn't get to be president. First, he said a girl couldn't even be president. Then he said, If girls can be president of us all, Tula oughta get a chance, too. She's older.

Tula won because her brother and sister voted for her, and even Amos did. Nessa voted for me like I knew she would, so I came out ahead of Dewey, who ran off mad before our meeting was even over.

With our camp walkable to Talihina, if we cut cross-country some, getting work there made sense. Tula's clothes were too poor, so that left Dewey and me, being old enough. After what Kate Barnard said about the laundryman, I figured some of the clubwomen might need help doing their own laundry, and I could work at their houses without being around town where people would see me much. I've brought in twice as much money as Dewey, plus most days the ladies send food for my ailing mama and baby brother, who I told them moved closer to town till the Joyner Gang is caught.

"All I know about is workin' the coal mines." Dewey kicks dry leaves as he walks. He's got himself a new pair of brogan shoes, probably snitched off somebody's back porch. He's been trying to mud them up so nobody'll recognize them in town. "These farmers got no need of a breaker boy."

"Learn some farm work, then. If you're mannerly to folks, they'll help you."

"People round here ain't trustable and kindly as you think. Wasn't a week before I met up with Amos, I come upon a old Choctaw woman, cryin' over the grave of her little granddaughter. Somebody poisoned the girl for her oil land. Like you say in them pirate stories at the night fire, I guess, dead men tells no tales."

Even with the hot May afternoon, I feel cold of a sudden. "You tell tales, Dewey. And that's a fact."

"You see all them land notices in town?" He snorts. "Why, I could make five nickels a day hangin' up handbills, but I don't feel right about it."

"You don't feel right about working." I've spotted him in Talihina, tossing nickels with other raggedy boys like him. Meantime, I'm taking the chance on getting seen if Tesco still has anybody out looking for me, but we need the food and the money. "And your stealing's gonna land us in trouble. What do you want with a book, anyway?" I know Dewey can't read.

"I brung it for you. It's got a pirate ship on it like them stories you tell from Mr. Keyes Radley. High seas and buried treasures and such."

I swallow hard, because I don't want to feel soft toward Dewey Mullins, but on the book cover is a gold ship with sails wide. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. "I bet it's a good one, but you oughtn't have taken it. That library wagon will lend us books for free. I asked."

"Except now this book is ours to keep. You wanted to make a school for the little kids in camp, so there's a book for it."

"Shelterwood Camp School," I say, and I like the way it sounds. That's what I named our hole-up at the dugout: Shelterwood Camp. Since I came in second place for president, I said I ought to get to be a commissioner, like Miss Kate Barnard. Now I'm commissioner of names, plus of the school and the bank because I can cipher and read. The only letters Dewey knows are the ones in his name, because I showed him by scratching it on a rock. He can't be bothered to write the E twice, so he spells it, D-E-W-Y.

When we move up the mountain to the hanging valley, we'll build a real school with writing paper and pencils, puncheon floors and piggy benches. It'll be a church on Sundays, plus a council house for our meetings. I haven't told the others yet, but I plan to name the new place Shelterwood Town, after the grandpappy oak my daddy loved. The roots spread even farther than the branches, Ollie Auggie, you know that? he'd say while we lay underneath and looked into leaves and sky. That's how strong a tree, or a person, or a family is. Strong as the roots, see? He'd breathe deep, and I'd feel his chest swell and sink under my head. The old shelterwood trees keep the forest safe from the wind and the weather, from too much sun and heat in the summer, too much snow in the winter. They're strong and pull up the water from down deep in the drought times, hold the soil so everything smaller can grow, and all of that comes from the roots of this big ol' tree. The old take care of the young, just like a family.

Of a sudden, I feel bad that Dewey never had anybody to tell him about trees and roots and families.

"It's a pretty book." I tuck it in my rucksack. I'll find a way to leave it in town where it'll get found with nobody to blame. We don't need any more troubles in Talihina. We're already careful to stay away from the tatty side of town, where that woman who shot at Amos might remember us, and I leave Skedee back at camp with Gable's old mule because a calico pony is noticeable. I keep one eye out for the lawman and the other for Mr. Lockridge's train car, but nothing's come of it in two whole weeks, so it seems more and more likely that Tesco gave Nessa and me up for drowned in the river after all.

Dewey pulls something else out of his poke sack. "I brung you a newspaper, too. Trade it for a bite of that grub you got from them ladies today. I'm hungry."

"You thieved a newspaper, too?"

"It's a old one," he snorts.

"I'll bet." I snatch at the paper, and he pulls it away, but I get half of the first page. He's right about it being an old paper because there's a picture of Miss Kate Barnard giving her big speech. Miss Kate Barnard in Talihina.The recent oratory of Oklahoma's Good Angel charged ordinary citizens to turn an ear to the concerns of miners, Railroad Brotherhoods, workingmen, poor, and friendless waifs, it says under the picture. The title reads, Clubwomen Accept the Charge! There's no note of who wrote the story, but even reading the first sentence, I know it was Mrs. Grube, because it sounds just like her.

She really did it,I think to myself. But I sure hope Mr. Grube doesn't find out.

"Give me the rest," I tell Dewey. "I'll read it out loud at night fire."

He slaps me in the chest with it. "You want it, carry it. You might oughta look in the middle. That newspaper man pulled one over on us. He put a picture of us in the paper. All of us. See for your own self."

I open the paper and find "Friendless Waifs Relate Woeful Tales at Hidden Encampment," plus a long story and an ink drawing of skinny kids huddled at a campfire. "Ain't much of a likeness, so I guess there's no harm." I don't want to speak bad of Mr. Brotherton. "Nobody'd know us by it. These kids look real pitiful."

"Maybe we do, too." Dewey turns his face away.

We walk on back toward Shelterwood Camp, listening for riders or wagons and watching for pretty bird feathers we can sell to the hatmaker in town. Finally we come to a hollow where the wild blackberry brambles and cow-itch vines grow like walls, head high on both sides of the road. Our cutoff is a toppled elm tree that's hung up on a tangle of briars so snaky and thick no man on foot or horseback would ever go into it. I named that tree Sleeping Beauty Bridge, just like the fairy tale. We climb up the roots and go right over the briars, walking on the trunk. At the other end, the tree's branches make a ladder, and we set our feet in a whole new land. Our land, at least for now.

The trek down a rocky, dry wash from there goes easier because we don't worry about riders or road wagons, just snakes. Timber rattlers shake their tails to warn you off, but the copperheads are quiet and the same color as tree shadows and dead leaves. They're sneaky and mean, and they'll kill you dead.

Picking up a long stick, Dewey moves on ahead. "I'll get the snakes away. I got the best eye."

"Tula's got the best eye. She's killed three around camp already."

Dewey pokes under leaves and rocks. "The hatmaker in Talihina makes a fine snakeskin hatband. I'm gonna kill some snakes. Sell him the skins."

"You'd best leave the snakes be if you can." My daddy taught me that.

"Pin the rascal under a stick, cut off the head with my bone-handle Barlow, one quick slice, like butter." Dewey has come up with a two-blade pocketknife, and he's so proud he's either sharpening it, talking about it, or whittling with it every chance he gets. He's made wood spoons, roasting sticks for the fire, and a crooked flute, plus carved his name in every tree he can find.

He won't say if he earned that knife or stole it, so I'm careful not to admire it.

"Cut somethin' in the neck, it's done for." He reaches into his pocket for the Barlow. "I seen one man slice another clean through the neck in a fight one time, blood spraying everywhere."

The way Dewey talks about knives and blood makes my stomach turn, and I tell him to hush up about dead men; I'm tired. That much is true. All day today I've been washing, and starching, then rolling Mrs. Paulson's curtains and dresser scarves through the big mangle iron. Day after tomorrow, which is Monday, we'll start on bed linens. Mrs. Paulson ain't only keepin' her own laundry at home now, she's taking in her husband's father's wash, and a widow lady's laundry, and a bachelor gentleman's, too. The housemaid at the Paulsons' is down with the gout and can barely do the dusting and minding the children, which are three-year-old twin boys. Mrs. Paulson's husband is Choctaw and a lawyer. He travels away a lot to the county courthouse in Poteau to argue for folks in the tribe that got done wrong on land and oil, coal, or timber deals. I'm hoping Mrs. Paulson might hire Tula, too, but first Tula and me would need to figure a plan about what Tula's wearin'.

I'm turning that over in my mind when Dewey yells, "I see a possum! Possum stew for supper!" He goes clawing his way up the side of the draw on all fours, pine straw and leaves flying everywhere. I guess he forgot about snakes, but he'll never listen, and so I keep going along the dry wash till I wind down the slope to our creek, where water music flows in the air so pretty I named it Sweetwater Valley. It's peaceful in the evening light, and I'd like to take off my shoes and soak my tired feet, but there's no time. Before Dewey shows up, I need to talk to Tula about my new plan…and get everybody else on my side to vote for it.

Dewey's bound to argue against it because he wants to keep running with those boys in town. But if he's going to bring more trouble than money, Tula and me should go to work and he should stay here to watch after Amos and the younger ones. We can't trust old Gable to do it, because he forgets about us and wanders off on his mule, searching for a magic spring pool where you can look into the water and see your true love. There he'll find Angeline.

I'm not even into camp before all the little kids come climb on me and pester about what have I got in my pack today? They're hoping for some tea cakes, or fresh bread, or cheese, or a cinnamon ball from a scrap of pie dough.

"Let me talk to Tula first." I look around for her, but only Amos is at the cookfire outside our cave shelter. "She go off food gathering?"

"Yeah, she did. Tula will find us somethin' more to put in the stew." Amos's eyes shine in a fond way when he says her name.

I unwind Nessa's fingers from mine, then shake off Pinti and Koi, who are so thin they weigh half what Nessa does. Little children need more food to grow. Koi looks up at me with his hungry face, and I touch a fingertip to his nose. "You been good all day?"

"They been," Amos says from where he's stretched out against a backrest Gable made for him, on account of sitting up still hurts too bad. "They gathered wood, and checked the fish traps, and Nessa caught us a little turtle. We're fixin' up a stew, Ollie. Don't that sound fine?" Propping on one elbow, he leans toward the fire and stirs the pot with a wood spoon Dewey carved from a long stick.

"Sure does," I say.

Nessa grins real proud. "I caught 'im right in the water, Ollie. He tried to bite me, too."

"That was real brave, Nessie. I can't wait for some turtle stew. There's no better kind." Truth is, that stew looks like mostly water again, but complaining only makes a belly emptier, so I don't. I'm better off than the rest anyhow because the ladies feed me at noonday when I work.

"You little kids take care of Skedee?" I ask when I don't see my pack pony in the brush corral we fixed against the rocks. "You walk him down along the creek, where he can eat some grass and leaves?"

"Gable took him and the mule," Amos answers. All the little kids go quiet because looking after Skedee is their job.

"You let that old man go off with my horse?" Quick as that, I go from tired to mad…and scared. Gable is kindly, but his mind is gone. Some days he helps us build firepits and fish traps and backrests. Other days, he wanders off mumbling about enemy soldiers and battle marches and spies. "What if he doesn't come back?"

"Tula said it'd be all right." Amos puts more wood on the fire.

"That ain't Tula's choice to make."

"She's the president of all us, ain't she?"

"Skedee's my horse."

"Everythin' belongs to the tribe, don't it?" Poking in the coals, he frowns up at me. "Ain't that what we decided at the council? We drawed a circle round the tribe. A circle in the dirt and all us in it."

"That don't go for horses!" Losing that calico pony would be like losing the last piece of my daddy.

"All together was what we said."

I throw my pack on the ground, then turn around and run down the creek, all the way to Lookout Tree, and climb up. From high in the branches, I try to spot old Gable and the mule and my horse, but there's not a sign of them anywhere.

Tears blur Sweetwater Valley while the sun sinks to the mountaintops, burns the sky, and finally shushes the land in deep blue and purple, pretty as the ruffles on the Lockridges' silk party frocks when Mrs. Lockridge would bring the girls down from the city for the soiree on the lawn of the big house. The men and the women danced and whirled to "The Blue Danube" and the "Willow Waltz" while the fiddlers fiddled and a stand-up piano played right out there on the porch. By late in the night, those new dresses from Paris were so ruined by dew and damp and sweat that Mrs. Lockridge and her girls would shuck them off by the bedroom door, and there the dresses would stay. After three days of the fun, the pile got shoved in a trunk and carried away on Lockridge's private train car, so nobody could make the dresses over and show up in them at the party next year.

I always wished Mr. Lockridge would give me one of those extra party frocks, so I could play princess in it. He loved bringing me good things his girls didn't want anymore—clothes and boots and coats and bonnets and such. I even got two pretend teacups and a tiny china teapot with the handle broke off, but much as I hoped for it, none of those silk soiree dresses ever came my way.

Standing in the Lookout Tree, I want my calico pony back more than I ever wanted a silk dress. But the sun falls, and hills go black, and fireflies sparkle like stars falling from the sky. Still, there's no sign of Skedee.

Down in the valley, Tula and the little kids holler for me. Nessa screams, "I'm sorry, Ollie! Come back, Ollie!"

The glow from the night fire rises up the cliff above our dugout and draws a face there, like the man in the moon. I watch the shadows shift so that his mouth moves. I hope he's calling Skedee home.

Even Dewey finally joins in, yelling, "Possum-turtle stew! Possum-turtle stew! Smells mighty good. Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, where is you-ooo-ooo-ooo?" I cover my ears because I don't want to come down. They can't find me up here. I made this tree my special secret after I didn't get elected president of Shelterwood Camp and I needed a place to be mad awhile. From these branches, I feel like I can almost see clear to the old homeplace. It's right there under my same stars.

"Wait on me," I whisper, so that the Lookout Tree can send the news through all the trees, till the old spreading oak hears in the hanging valley. "I'm coming."

I nestle into a crook where one branch hooks back on another like the number four, and I wait for the moon to rise. It's past full and waning again, which means we've been gone from Tesco Peele's house about a month now. I wonder, does Mama ever think of us? Or are powders and wildcat whiskey still all that matter? Does she miss me, or is she glad I'm not there to bother her anymore? Maybe liquor and opium powders dry up love the same way they dry up a body, leave it brittle and thin and pale, till it turns to dust and blows away and is gone.

Maybe everything's gone. Even Skedee.

Time and again, I sit up and look for the glow of the moon against white hide, Skedee's or the mule's, and I listen for old Gable singing one of his songs.

Time and again, there's nothing.

Finally, I close my eyes and see my calico pony, running free from his halter and headed up the back trail to the homeplace. I jump from the tree onto his back and we race toward the sky…

A scream wakens me, jerks me so hard I almost come right off the branch. My mind clears in a hurry, and I remember where I am. Someplace down below, a panther calls out again, its cry sounding like a woman's death wail.

Another panther answers, so close my hair stands on end. I listen at their screams back and forth from both sides, getting nearer, so they can find each other to mate.

I get out of that tree so fast I'm half falling, then I stumble and slide down the slope while branches claw my clothes and my face and hands and legs, and I hope not to step on a snake. I don't even catch a breath till I cross the creek near our dugout.

In the dark, the wails come one right after the other, but at camp, everybody's sound asleep, even Amos, who's supposed to guard at night. The fire's banked and burning, but I put more wood on, then shake Amos and whisper, "You best keep an eye peeled and the fire fed. There's panthers close by."

He feels for the spear, and the pine-knot torch, and my daddy's hunting knife, then he stretches his neck and turns an ear when the panthers cry again. "I been watchin'," he says.

"You ain't watching with your eyes closed." Hiding in that tree hasn't gotten rid of my mad. I want to hurt somebody. It's your fault, I want to say. If you hadn't gotten shot, we'd be up the mountain by now, and no crazy old man would've run off with my horse.

Amos's eyes turn away, like he can see all that in me. "I feel real sorry." His voice is mournful. "Real sorry about your pony."

His eyes pool up, and a tear rolls down his cheek. I should tell him I know he didn't mean any of this to happen. Between Skedee and Gable's mule, all the forage nearby is used up, and the little kids can only go so far before they might get lost. Tula has to hunt for food, and Amos can't help, and Dewey and me need to get work and money in town.

I ought to tell Amos, We're all just doing as best we can, and every one of us is bone-tired, and it's not fair you got shot. Not fair that my pony is gone. Not fair that the little kids are so hungry they're used to it.

Not fair that some girls get china dolls and silk dresses.

Nothing is fair.

But all that comes out is "He was my daddy's."

I go to my pallet behind the dugout wall and lie down and cover my ears against the screams.