After everyone was served, we sat in family groupings, without the usual mingling and talking. Long before sunset the last wagonload of grievers, led by two lazy mules, pulled away from New Hope Cemetery.
ef
During the grieving, Efram leaned against the pine tree shading his family. He longed to be about his task of cutting and carving. When his mother appeared at his side with a plate of pork and dumplings, he slid down the trunk of the tree and buried himself in the food, though—in his thinking—this feasting time denied him his work.
While his brother Ben helped their mother to the wagon, Efram untied his horse from the rear of it, nodded his goodbyes and headed to the quarry. An hour later he dismounted twenty feet from the granite quarry’s edge, where he had already cut and dragged three of the needed twenty stones. Removing his mallet and carving chisel from his saddlebag, he lifted the first stone to the slab of rock that served as his carving table.
Efram had decided, seeing his family so deep in grief, to carve Taloa’s stone first and present it to her mother and father—his aunt and uncle. He stood over the dull slab and gripped the chisel with his left hand to lightly chip the faint outline of letters.
He tapped the chisel barely enough to stir dust from the stone, and his father entered his thoughts. Efram loved his cousin as he did his father. With the birth of the one so soon followed by the death of the other, he saw the events as connected, as did many Choctaws. Taloa, they knew, was sent to take and hold the spirit of the elder.
Now both were gone. Efram whispered her name, then gripped the chisel tight and swung hard, cutting deep the leg of a “T.”
“Taloa,” he said louder, and swung again, harder still, sending the blade into the groove.
“Taloa.” With every swing he called her name louder, with every shout he buried his cut deeper.
“Taloa!” he shouted, till the stone split and Efram slumped to the ground, sweating and panting.
With only a sliver of moon to light his way, Efram lifted the two pieces of stone and stumbled to the edge of the quarry. He held the granite high over his head, swayed back and forth, and flung the stones to the bottom of the pit. As the stones shattered, he fell backwards, stubbornly refusing to break his fall and landing hard on his back.
He struggled to his feet and watched as shadows danced over the shards of twinkling, shattered granite. His anger seemed out of place as he beheld the spectacle of light rising from the dark hole. He mounted his horse and returned to New Hope Cemetery.
Across the road from the burial grounds, trees had been cleared for farming. The five-acre plot still held its stones intact. Limestone chunks of every size and shape decorated the field. Efram glanced at the graves, twenty mounds of dark dirt, then turned to the stones.
He approached a round stone three feet high and rocked it back and forth, loosening the dirt. With a slow and steady tug, Efram lifted the stone from the earth. He rolled it across the uneven road and onto the burial ground, settling it at the head of a grave.
Efram worked till dawn, digging stones from the field till his hands bled and his fingernails were chipped and broken. On stone number seven a buried sliver of limestone cut deep into his left palm. By the time Efram realized he was bleeding, his britches, shirt, and face were covered in blood, and his hair was a thick mass of sopping red.
Just after sunrise Lavester McKesson arrived at the cemetery with a wagonload of fresh-picked flower bundles to set among the graves. He was surprised to see twenty white stones sitting by the graves. Some were tall and cylindrical, some flat to the ground, others were round or oblong, but all shared one unforgettable bond. Blood. They were, each and every one of them, spotted with handprints of blood.
Efram slept at the base of a tree.
“What a sight to see,” Lavester later said. “Me carrying sweet-smelling flowers for the little dead girls, and there those stones were. Grave stones, no doubt. That’s what they were. But no date or name. Just twenty white stones covered in blood.”
“Mon up, son,” Lavester said, lifting Efram by the armpits. “Lemme hep you. You not hurt bad, are you?”
“Huh? No, I’m not hurt,” Efram said, seeing the blood covering his shirt and britches. “Just a cut on the hand is all.”
“Well, let’s get you home. I done tied your horse to my wagon. He’ll follow along behind. Been a long day for everybody.” Efram rose and followed Lavester to his wagon, where two old mules raised their heads in welcome. One sniffed and snorted and the other stomped the ground at the sight of him.
While Lavester pulled away from New Hope Cemetery, a growing number of late-arriving relatives, out-of-towners, approached the gravesite. Climbing from wagons and sliding off horses, they moved without speaking to the fresh piles of dirt over the twenty graves. As on the burial day, they carried blankets and baskets of food and settled onto the grounds for a daylong grieving.
As the day settled to a close, the mourners trudged their way to the waiting wagons. In the hovering light of sunset, the stones glowed a soft farewell.
Chipisa lachi, they seemed to say. See you in the future.
Spiro Town
Amafo's Spiderweb Eye
Rose • April 1897
One early Saturday morning in April, two weeks before Easter, Amafo quietly slipped into our bedroom. He nudged me in the ribs and grabbed Jamey’s left foot, the one always hanging off the bed. Amafo was already dressed, but not in his usual clothes—a white shirt and worn-out blue coveralls. No, he was dressed in his reddish-brown Sunday-only suit.
“Get on up outta bed now,” Amafo said. My sleepy eyes stared at his green tie with the big white circles on it, too tight around his neck. I knew that Pokoni was part of the day’s design. Amafo never tied his own tie, but liked to fuss and squirm till Pokoni pinched his nose and made him stop.
“Don’t be laying around all day!” Amafo said. “Somebody come last night and did all the chores. Nothing fer us to do today but go to town. Figure we kin watch the trains come in at the depot.”
We were out of our beds like a house afire. We made our beds quick too, folding back the sheets and covers and fluffing up the pillows, just in case Momma thought about overruling Amafo on the chore-doing business. We put on our going-to-town clothes and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.
Momma heated up last night’s cornbread and we dipped it in buttermilk for breakfast. Jamey and I didn’t say a word at breakfast, ’cept for when Jamey said, “Sure is good cornbread. Yes ma’am.”
I shot him a look to say, That’s enough, now. Don’t push our luck.
After breakfast I cleared the table and was just about to fetch pump water for washing, when Momma stopped me in my tracks.
“That’s all right, hon. You go on with Amafo. I can do the cleaning.”
“Yakoke,” I whispered, then gave her a good long thank you look, the one I knew she felt right through her skin.
Amafo already had Whiteface hitched up and pulled around front, ready to go. Jamey and I climbed onto the back bed of the wagon and off we went. We were so excited we lay on our backs and stared at the treetops, barely speaking all the way to Spiro.
The trains came in late evenings every night of the week, but they were mostly delivering goods and mail, with very few passengers. But on Saturday sometimes as many as five trains would unload passengers—passengers dressed up and coming from Little Rock or Memphis or even as far away as New Orleans.
It was just past nine when we arrived at the train station. Amafo nestled our wagon to a spot behind the depot. He stepped down and around to the tying rail to secure