When I Crossed No-Bob (13 page)

Mr. Tempy puts his arm around me and my shaking settles some. "I'm not going to tell you it's easy, because it's not. I left my family up north. Hardest thing I ever did. But I found my own family here. You'll be fine. You're stronger than you know."

Zula takes me by the hand.

"Where are you taking her?" Mr. Tempy says.

"The Choctaw always thinks," she says. "We need time to answer."

"But she's not even Choctaw!"

Zula doesn't bother answering Mr. Tempy. She leads me to a cabin off in the distance, set apart from the others. She tells me she will perform rites to secure divine favor and ensure that my passage into the outside world will be successful.

"But I haven't said I'm going to Raleigh," I say. "Not yet."

"Words," Zula says. "Too many words."

She paints me white as though I am not white, as though I am Choctaw. Up close, Zula smells of sage. She says that I am crossing boundaries and that I must prepare myself for the transformation from order to disorder. She says I must respect these boundaries to maintain order in my world. We drink tea she has brewed special. It is minty and musty-tasting and it makes me open my eyes wide.

Together we sit alone in this hut made for crossings.

I tell Zula about the little man in my dreams. I tell her that after sleeping amongst the Choctaw, I think that he has left me for good. I tell Zula about my dreams and she tells me the little man's name because she says she knows all about him.

"That is Kwanokasha," she says. "He is one of the border
guards. He lives in caves in the rough and broken part of the country, searching for young children whom he captures and brings to his cave where three spirits live. The child who takes the knife will grow up to be a murderer. The one who fancies the poisonous herbs will never be able to help others. But you took the medicinal herbs," she says, looking me over, taking my hand. "You will be a healer."

I laugh. "Me? Don't you know the O'Donnells? I think I was born to be one of those others. Not a healer."

Zula is not laughing. She is shaking her head. "I do not know this tribe O'Donnell. I only know Anglo and Addy. You have met up with Kwanokasha. He has wanted to influence you during your crossing. But you? You have chosen good medicine. You mean to help people."

"No," I say. "I'm just mean. I'm an O'Donnell and that's what everyone says about us."

Zula, she just smiles.

"I knew I recognized you. I knew the first time I saw you across the river, when you were with your friend. You and I. We are both healers."

Mr. Tempy and I ride together on one horse all morning, and when we get to Raleigh, we see children playing in the street.
The children look so young and small and they make so much noise, more noise than I've heard children make in a long, long time. They look up at me, riding with Mr. Tempy. They point and stare. They say, "Here come Injuns." They say, "Look at that little boy Injun riding with his pappy."

I am glad now for Zula's paint. I am glad for the disguise.

Mr. Tempy whispers to me about Raleigh. Court officials and jurors stay at the hotel owned by Mr. Childre across the street from the courthouse. They talk politics and court cases. They are there now, sitting on the big front porch, dressed in their Sunday best.

He tells me that the main room of the hotel has bullet holes in the ceiling from when Mr. Childre was mistaken for a deserter from the Confederate army and shot at. As we pass the hotel, we hear the tinny piano and plinking banjos from inside. The doors open wide then and all of Mr. Childre's children come running out. He shouts out to them to scat. He says he does not want his children or his wife mixed up in the dirty affairs of the country. He says this loud enough for everyone to hear, then he eyeballs Mr. Tempy and me as we ride past.

Mr. Tempy tethers his horse. I am shaking all over again and I think that my knees will give out from under me. Mr.
Tempy, he takes my hand and puts what looks like a tooth on my palm.

"That there's a bear claw. It's what I took from Kwanokasha. It's helped me some. Maybe you can get something out of it too."

I put the bear claw in my pocket and walk into the courthouse with Mr. Tempy. People stop talking and stare. I hear, "Who let in the Injuns?" I hear, "They're not Injuns, just dressed like Injuns." Mr. Tempy heads for the front, but I pull his sleeve and we sit down close to the back.

Rew Smith is sitting there in front of us next to his pappy, Mr. Smith. He looks at me, then pinches his nose with his fingers.

"He smells like dirt," he says of me. His pappy laughs.

I am glad Rew does not recognize me. I sniff myself and it's true I whiff of dried leaves, mud, and acorns, but what of it? Leastways I don't eat dirt. My cousins in No-Bob eat dirt, but not me.

I have been gone and away in the woods for a good long time. I have been quiet with myself and listened only to screech owls and squirrels, deer and turkeys, Zula and other women in the tribe. Here in this town of Raleigh, Mississippi, there is only noise noise noise. Zula is right. Us Anglos are full up with too much noise and too many words. My ears ring
with all the words. Children running around, screaming in the streets, women inside whispering whispering, and the men brawling in the Harrison Hotel, singing, shouting, and making more noise. They can't sit quiet. They can't sit still. When do they think?
Do
they think?

When Pappy comes into the courthouse, I can hardly stand to look at him. He needs cleaning up some, with his craggy eyebrows and big ears. He looks like one more dirty O'Donnell child. I have not been there to care for him.

Pappy passes me without recognizing me. I am invisible to him.

Then I hear the talk start up. I hear a lady whisper to another lady, "Those O'Donnells? Meanest folks what ever lived." The other lady whispers back, "It's them kind of folks what's got things so tore up now." I hear, "I've never known an O'Donnell to come off the loser." I hear, "They just like a little fun and mischief. They're not
bad.
" I hear someone say Mark O'Donnell, my pappy, has killed as many as fifty men in his lifetime. The number is there without the funny stories.

Pappy takes his seat right in front of me and Mr. Tempy. He sits next to Mr. Smith and Rew. He is right in front of me, so close I can smell the oil he put in his dirty hair to smooth it back. I can smell his whiskey breath as he whispers something
to Mr. Smith. I can see his frayed collar, the comb tracks on the back of his head, the caked dirt on the back of his neck and behind his ears. I want to shake him and scream,
Pappy, why did you ever leave Momma and me?

Then the sheriff brings in Mr. Frank. Oh, but he looks tired and pale. I catch a glimpse of Miss Irene up front, big with child. When they look at each other, they both look glad to see each other and not. I understand this. They want to see each other, miss each other, but not here, not this way. Mr. Frank is shamed. He sits at a table with his lawyer, without his wife, without his family.

Miss Irene sits directly behind Mr. Frank.

The judge comes in, we stand up, and he thumps his big gavel on his desk, calling for all of us to settle down and listen up. Two men stand in front of his desk, whispering their whispers. These men in suits are lawyers.

One of the lawyers takes his seat with Mr. Frank. The other signals to Mr. Smith, who says to everyone around him, "This shouldn't take too long." Pappy and Rew laugh and straighten themselves, proud to know the man who steps up to the front of the courtroom to sit with his very own lawyer.

As the sheriff walks toward the back of the courtroom, Mr. Tempy gets his attention. The sheriff comes over and Mr.
Tempy whispers something to him, pointing toward me. The sheriff hurries to the front of the courtroom and whispers to Mr. Frank's lawyer.

It seems they're all through with accusing Mr. Frank of taking Sunny Rise out of town and out of state. We learn too that someone has taken a good bit of courtroom time proving that Sunny Rise owed Mr. Smith a thousand dollars, and because Mr. Frank took Sunny Rise away, it is up to Mr. Frank to pay up.

They are into the let's-hear-what-you-have-to-say-for-yourself part.

Mr. Smith's lawyer calls Little Bit to the stand. She is wearing a fine new peach-colored calico dress. The lawyer asks her questions about what all her brother Mr. Frank has been doing. I pray that Little Bit keeps her head.

"Is your brother a member of any organization that you know of?"

Little Bit thinks on this. "The church."

Folks laugh.

"How about the Ku Klux Klan?"

"No, sir! Not my brother. He says it's nothing but evil." Many folks whisper and I can't hear what they are saying.
The lawyer smiles at all of us in the courtroom, smiling like not being a member of the Klan is something bad.

"See, my brother helped rebuild that schoolhouse that the men with the hoods burned down to the ground. The sheriff is still looking for the men who did that, and me and Addy O'Donnell saw it all. That night."

Everybody in the room, they all start to talk at once.

The lawyer keeps on smiling, like he thinks this little girl is real funny. "Miss Russell."

"Little Bit," Little Bit says.

"Little Bit. It would be impossible to identify any of the men from that night because they were all wearing hoods. You said so yourself."

"But I know their shoes," she says, just as sure as she can be. Mr. Smith and Pappy just snicker.

"Show me a shoe and I'll show you the man," Little Bit says. She tells the judge and the jury what kind and what color shoes two of the men wore. "I'm closer to the ground than most people," Little Bit tells the judge.

The judge nods and says just to make sure that Mr. Frank is not a Klan member and was not there that night of the fire, breaking the law, he'd like to see Mr. Frank's shoes. When Mr.
Frank stands, we all see that he is wearing shoes he has made himself on his land and these are not the shoes that Little Bit described.

Mr. Smith and Pappy are not laughing anymore. Pappy tucks in his legs so that his feet are under his seat.

The lawyer says, "Frank Russell is your brother, is he not, young lady?"

"Yes, sir, he is, sir."

"And you would do anything for him, would you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Including lie?"

She thinks about this. "No, sir. Ma and Pa taught me not to lie. So did Frank."

A few of the folks laugh. When Little Bit is excused, she walks straight to the back of the courthouse toward me and Mr. Tempy.

"See?" she whispers to me. "I told you I'm not some Little Miss Priss."

She is the only one to recognize me. Only she would.

We both of us smile at each other. She was sitting up front with her ma and pa, Mr. Frank's parents. Jack is there too, taken to sucking his thumb again. I wish Little Bit could sit by me.

Then she takes a seat right by me. She squirms to fit. She's
giggly and sweet-smelling and having too much fun. She takes my hand, then with her other wipes away some of Zula's white paint from around my eyes. She laughs and whispers, "Sure good to see you again, Addy O'Donnell."

She presses something into the palm of my hand. Paper. It is the folded-up map we buried inside the jar under Mr. Frank's praying log.

Mr. Frank's lawyer calls Mr. Frank to have a seat and to tell him about his most recent trip to New Orleans. Turns out that since Mr. Frank had all his goods stolen on his first trip, he went again. That's when Sunny Rise disappeared, that night I saw the men in the land of the bones. While Mr. Frank was gone.

Mr. Frank talks about his purchases in New Orleans and how the next morning, when he was ready to leave town, he went down to the French Market and had a breakfast of fish, oysters, and coffee.

"How are we to believe that you were in New Orleans and not with Sunny Rise?" Mr. Frank's lawyer asks, and I can't help but wonder whose side he's on.

"Well, I did meet up with an acquaintance in New Orleans. Garner O'Donnell."

People all around us start to whisper.

"When did you see Garner?"

"The night I was in New Orleans. The night Sunny disappeared. Garner and I took dinner together."

"That all?"

Mr. Frank looks at Miss Irene and lowers his head. He clears his throat and says softly, "We had a drink together. At a saloon."

Some of the women in the courthouse draw their breath in. Some of the men in the courthouse laugh out loud. Miss Irene just stares quietly on.

Mr. Frank steps down, and the lawyer calls Garner O'Donnell to the stand. Garner swears in and takes the stand. He testifies that he had dinner and a drink with Mr. Frank in New Orleans the night Sunny Rise disappeared.

Mr. Frank's lawyer says that's all he wants to ask Garner, but then Mr. Smith's lawyer steps up and asks Garner, "Mr. O'Donnell, weren't you in this very court before? Weren't you the very man who once tried to cheat Frank Russell out of his own land?"

"I wasn't cheating..."

"Answer the question," the judge says.

"Yes, sir. I am the same man."

"And now you say you had a friendly drink with Frank Russell in New Orleans?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you expect us to believe you?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did the two of you discuss?"

Garner clears his throat. "Business, mostly," he says. "And my niece Addy. Frank took in Addy when her momma left her. I thanked Frank for that. I bought him a drink."

People in the courtroom mumble, but I can't hear what they're saying.

When Garner steps down, he passes Mr. Frank and nods. Mr. Frank does not nod back. He has his head down like he can't even look at Garner even though Garner has done him a kind of favor.

I see Mr. Frank lean back to whisper something to Miss Irene. I guess that he's hoping he has not brought her shame. I see her hold his hand and smile. I hear her say, "I love you, Frank Russell."

This is the love that is good in a marriage. This is the love that Momma and Pappy never had. This here in front of me is a proud love, a quiet, honorable love. This love rises above fierce love and smashing lips.