Around one o’clock in the morning, the conversation wound down to a light sprinkling. I could hear the loud clicking of our grandfather clock. It sat by the staircase wall of the living room and its quiet noise always filled the house after everyone went to bed.
This was farming country and Saturday had been a working day like any other. Droopy eyes blinked and tired heads went to nodding. Snoring came from every corner.
At one-thirty, Pokoni moved slowly to the living room and settled back in her usual chair facing the empty fireplace. She closed her eyes and when Amafo rose to heat milk for her cocoa, she merely tilted her head in his direction. In a few minutes the sweet smell of scalding milk drifted from the kitchen. Amafo appeared carrying grandmother’s cocoa cup, stirring the chocolate to life as he walked. She opened her eyes and accepted the steamy drink.
Amafo moved to the center of the room and stood before the fireplace. The snoring ceased and slumping men sat up. The front door eased open and several men entered, heads down and tip-toeing. The kitchen emptied and women stood side-by-side with their husbands. The vigil, they knew, would soon be over.
“I need your help,” my Amafo said, and a room full of anxious eyes turned his way. “You have every one of you been very nice to offer to help me and my family. I accept your offer.”
“You say the word, we’re ready,” said Cousin Wilbur. Mister Pope scooted behind him, leaned over and placed one large hand on Wilbur’s shoulder, letting the young man know it was time to listen.
“Marshal Hardwicke expects me to stay far away from town. And if I did, this would all be forgotten. But I will never forget this day and my grandchildren will never forget this day.”
Amafo took his glasses off and held them up for all to see.
“It is the day my glasses were broken. But maybe it will be a day of blessings after all. Maybe now the people of Spiro can see, as we have seen for years, the man who is their marshal.”
Amafo was tiring now, fading rapidly. His face sagged and he sat down on the ledge of the fireplace. Pokoni reached out and touched him on the knee, and a new breath of energy seemed to fill him. He lifted his head and gazed open-eyed around the room.
“We must all agree to do this, all of us. I need your help,” he said. “Many of you work for Nahullos. They gonna try to talk to you about today. Don’t fall into that trap. They gonna ask about the marshal, what you think of the marshal, what he did to that old Choctaw man at the railroad.”
Amafo stood up real slow and pulled the hat from his head like he was wiping his brow. The right side of his face, where the board struck him, was deep purple. Even from where I stood I could see broken blood vessels snaking off from the main wound. His eye was swelled shut. A line of dried blood as thick as a bacon slab ran down his cheek.
I gasped and a hot breath of air flew from my chest. Murmurs floated around the room and several husbands and wives moved closer to touch and hold one another. Pokoni blinked several times and thrust her chin up, making sure she held her head high. I knew she was fighting back the tears.
This was Amafo’s moment and tears would do him no good.
“When they try to talk to you ’bout it, just walk away,” Amafo said. “If you got to say anything, tell ’em how tough you think the marshal is. Tell ’em how you’d never want to cross him. Tell ’em he is a big, strong man. Then walk away.
“They will talk after you leave. They will tell stories about today. More people than the railroad platform could hold will claim to have seen it all. Everyone will talk about Marshal Hardwicke. And when the talk dies down, I will always be there, wearing my spiderweb glasses.
“They will see a lot of me in town. I will cross the street to speak friendly words to the marshal. I will do this. Over and over I will do this, every day I will do this, speak friendly words to him and tip my hat to him, till one day he will turn away from me and they will see who is afraid. That is how we will win. Our enemies will be defeated by our goodness.”
“Now, this day is over and the Lord’s Day is upon us,” he said, replacing his hat. “You are all welcome to stay. Goodnight and God bless you. Yakoke. You are my friends.”
Amafo helped my grandmother from her chair and the two of them made a slow procession up the stairs. Lamps were blown out throughout the house, women brought blankets and pillows in from the wagons, and within ten minutes an entire household of Choctaws nuzzled in the warm clutches of sleep.
Sunday Morning
Rose
The road to the church was the color of a roan horse, lined with tall pines, deep green and sweet to smell. It seemed every Sunday a breeze caught the tops of the pines just as we rounded the last curve in the road, just before the church appeared in the clearing up ahead. Those green pine trees bowed and waved to everybody passing below.
“God’s welcome to His children,” Pokoni always said.
Every Sunday morning two hundred Choctaws drove their wagons down that dirt road on their way to the First Christian Church of Skullyville. On the Sunday following my grandfather’s hurtful injury, it was twice that many at least. The church was nestled in a clearing surrounded by a tight cluster of pines, elms, oaks and sagging sycamores. The trees to the east of the church were trimmed back and the undergrowth cleared, owing to their closeness to the graveyard. To the south and west, smaller redbuds, flame-leafed sumacs, and thorny wild roses grew unchecked.
After what happened at the train station, the Amafo I thought I knew would have stayed far away from people for at least a month. But this new Amafo, the Amafo born at the station and brought to life at our home last night, insisted that our family be the first to arrive. As we passed beneath the final clump of pines, Amafo took off his glasses, cleaned the lens, and squinted at the sky.
“Take some getting used to,” said Pokoni. I expected Amafo to nod or speak in any of a hundred ways to agree, something like “Umm,” or “uh-huh,” something oldmanish.
Amafo said nothing. He stared at the back of Pokoni’s neck till she reached behind herself and took his hand. Take some getting used to passed as everyday talk, but Pokoni was not talking about the broken glasses. She was talking about the broken world we were now slipping into.
As we neared the church, I saw a recently formed grouping of families, old to our congregation, but new in their ways. The social order of the church had changed since the New Hope burning. We now had in our midst a family of people who had all lost children in the fire.
This gathering grew every week, as grievers gave way to their grieving. They had settled on a roosting place, a comfortable spot in the shade of the elms near the graveyard. To an outsider, the grieving ones might look like a family of real kin, hovering around the graveyard for the anniversary of somebody’s death. But for those of us who knew them, their usual selves, we stared to see the changes.
No one laughed, not anymore. No one looked at anyone when they spoke. No one grabbed a friend by the waist. People touched, but not like before. Women and girls quietly stroked each other’s hair. Among the grieving men and boys, brothers and fathers to the dead girls, talking gave way to shoulder squeezing and lengthy handshakes.
My father reined Whiteface to a slow walking halt in the shade of two old oaks. Morning service was still an hour and a half away.
Amafo gripped the side rail of the wagon and swung himself to the ground. Whiteface whinnied and neighed. As Dad tied the reins to a tree, Amafo pulled his hat low and stepped into the woods. Moments later he reappeared in the midst of the grieving ones. Pokoni gripped my hand and we both watched him move among his new brethren. Slow and slower still, he lost himself among them.
My eyes teared up to see him stooped and hollowed through with sadness, but Pokoni only smiled and said, “Sweet child, you ’bout to see why I love your ’mafo so. Stop your tears