Once out of eyesight, Colonel Mingo double-backed on himself and made a wide circle around the woods, creeping low among the surrounding bushes and trees. Lying close to the ground, he studied the men. Four men, just as Samuel had said. He watched their mannerisms, their tense and ready way of crouching, saw the gear lying beside their ponies.
Small ponies for quick getaways, he noted. He waited till the sound of laughter from the house caught the men’s attention, then crept close enough to hear them speak.
“If Hardwicke was here, we’d already be on our way home,” said a short stout man. “He’d start with the barn, I’m telling you. He’d torch it from all sides, then nail the door shut soes they couldn’t follow us. Them horses would die from the smoke.”
“Ain’t no way we could get to the barn without them seeing us,” said another.
“Besides,” said a third, “the marshal said to just let him know if they’re planning anything. He didn’t say nothing about no burning. Not tonight, at least, not till he knows which way the new Indian agent is gonna see things.”
“Yeah, Hardwicke talks about keeping a watch out. But if he was here, he’d figure out a way to put a torch to that barn. Knowing him, he’d set fire to the old man’s house too. Maybe kill some Indians, get ’em on the run. You all know that’s what he’d be doing.”
Colonel Mingo slipped back to his campsite, his heart pounding with every step. He carried with him a terrible secret. Mingo knew who set the fire that burned New Hope. He also knew that if he shared the secret, many of his friends would die.
He found Samuel pacing back and forth in the shadows, watching.
“Samuel,” he said, “these men were sent by Marshal Hardwicke. I don’t think they want any trouble, but one of ’em is talking about setting a fire to the barn, so we have to keep an eye on ’em.”
“I can stay awake and let you know if they cause any trouble.”
“That’s a good idea, Samuel. I’ll stay with the children and you keep an eye on Hardwicke’s men. We don’t want any bloodshed.”
“I understand,” said Samuel. “I’ll report to you every few hours till morning.”
“Be careful,” Mingo said. Samuel nodded and disappeared into the shadows.
Goode Kitchen and Strong Women
Rose
Twenty women—wives and kinfolks to the men in the living room— crowded around the kitchen table. While Pokoni and I washed dishes and served the men, they kept us going. They cut corn from the cob, chopped chicken for pashofa, and refilled coffee water boiling on the stove. Their talk circled the affair at the train station, viewing it in a corner-of-the-eye way of talking. Though armed with butcher knives and long-handled spoons, their real weapons were words, and they knew how to use them.
“There’s no telling what Uncle Lester would have done if he was still alive. Mercy, did he have a temper.”
“I believe the marshal’s wife would be shopping for a black dress, Lester have anything to do with it.”
“He was not afraid of nothing or nobody.”
“Uh-huh. He remind me of that Wilson boy, what was his name? ’Member, the one went in the army. Took after a officer with a pickaxe. Man made him work in the kitchen and he hit him with a pickaxe.”
“Nothing good came of that.”
“I ’spec he still in jail.”
“Somewhere back east.”
“Nord Caylina, I believe.”
“How’s the water looking?”
“Need refilling, look like to me.”
“Gonna need another chicken ’fore long.”
“With all the noise coming from in there, you’d think they wouldn’t have time to eat.”
“They men. They gonna find time to eat.”
“You know that’s true.”
“Un-huh.”
“They gonna get to the table.”
“I believe that.”
“Last time my man went to battle, it was over a drumstick.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Here come the soup pot. Look like somebody done licked the bottom of it.”
“Must be my husband.”
“Could be mine.”
“Yessir. They men. They gonna find time to eat.”
“You know that’s true.”
With the children nestled around Colonel Mingo’s campfire, the men going at it in the front room, and the younger ladies helping Pokoni in the kitchen, the older women roosted comfortably on the back porch, bathed in the blue light of the waning moon.
The sounds amongst these women were creaking sounds, the creaks of a rocking chair, the soft creaks of porch planks as tired bodies shifted and settled. Every gust of wind carried earthy smells, of hay and chickens, sometimes the perfume of gardenias.
These older women seemed to float in a different world, a place of whispery music and faded colors. It was a place not between life and death, but rather above life and death, above it all. The calls to action and urgings from the living room, they had no place here. They were fires from a distant hillside. When these women spoke of the men in the house, they spoke of them as if they were children.
“The marshal will pay. He will suffer—and his kind, they will all suffer,” a deep voice boomed from the living room.
“That sounds like Bobby Harris, little Bobby Harris,” said Mrs. McVann, puckering her lips in soft laughter. “I still remember him begging me for a piece of blackberry pie. He saw it sitting on the kitchen table and went to almost crying, chubby little Bobby Harris.”
“Wasn’t he a whiney boy?” said Mrs. Mangum.
“He will suffer,” another man repeated.
The word suffer unsettled the women. The lid of a memory box rattled open and threads of hymns came pouring out. The women started singing to themselves, till one single voice stood out. It was cracked and wavering. The other women fell silent and the eldest woman sang.
Hatak yoshoba chia ma!
Achukmut haponaklo;
Chisus chi okchalinchi ut
Auet chi hohoyoshke;
Chisus okut
Auet chi hohoyoshke.
Hark the voice of love and mercy,
Sounds aloud from Calvary.
See it rends the rocks asunder
Shakes the earth and veils the sky.
“It is finished, it is finished,”
Hear the dying Saviour cry.
Somebody picked up a turtle shell rattle I’d left lying on the porch and started shaking it. The sound was so soft. Those little stones shifting around in the turtle’s home made everything around it glow in the color of holy. It was a yellow and blue color, like peeking through rainclouds at a tree-shaded lake shining in the sky.
Holy, holy, holy.
Seeing those old women sitting on the porch.
Holy,