Through the right lens, the shattered spiderweb lens, everyone was distorted. Legs and arms were broken and people seemed ugly and freakish. I turned to look at the young man who chose to help us, expecting him to appear like the others.
At first glance he did. But then he smiled and I saw through the spiderweb lens that this was a good man. I lowered the glasses from my face and the man nodded to me, as if we shared a secret.
“Are you sure you want to help us?” I asked.
“Yes. Give the glasses to your grandfather and let’s get him to his feet.”
Each of us took an arm. We counted to three and huffed and puffed and lifted my grandfather to a standing position. Jamey appeared like a rabbit from his hiding place, brushing the dirt and dust from his britches.
“I can see you home,” the man said.
“You have a train to catch.”
“There will be other trains. Will you be safe?”
“Oh yes,” I heard myself saying. “No one would touch us now. No one wants to be part of this.”
“You have a wagon?”
“Yes. And I can drive it.” I was lying, of course. I had never driven a wagon before. But I knew that in an hour I would know how to drive it, if we were to make it home.
The man tipped his hat once more. I saw respect in his eyes. He turned away and joined the throng of people crowding around the doors of the departing train. I now had the task of getting Amafo to the wagon.
“Here, Jamey,” I told him, “come over here by Amafo. Don’t get in his way, just walk next to him. He’s gonna rest his hand on your shoulder.” I positioned Amafo’s right hand on Jamey’s shoulder, squeezing it soft to let him know I loved him, then I stepped in front of my grandfather in case he fell forward.
The three of us rambled across the platform. Excepting for the shameless and unspeakable horror of what had just happened, we might have been a medicine show act, a horse with a make-believe head and tail and two funny men under a blanket trying to walk in step.
I walked directly in front of Amafo and he rested his left hand on my shoulder. With every few steps I could feel the pressure grow lighter. I knew Amafo was beginning to move under his own power.
“Ho,” he said as we stepped to the street. His head slumped and we eased him against the side of the stationhouse. He held his head and wrinkled his face and I knew he was still dizzy.
Amafo looked haggard and ancient, leaning against the white boards of the building. The whiteness seemed to drown him, looming twenty feet above us. His red-brown suit, so crisp and churchly only a few minutes earlier, was now wrinkled and dirty. Two large circles of dust decorated his pants legs, marks of his fall. His broken glasses nestled halfway down his nose.
We lifted Amafo onto the wagon and began the long trip home.
I was only a young lady of eleven years, but I was old enough to know that our Choctaw world was changing. Maybe this day turned out to be one of the best days of my life after all. I learned to see as Amafo saw. I learned to see through Amafo’s spiderweb eye.
Night Gathering
By the time I eased the wagon into the barn and unhitched Whiteface, I think every Choctaw within fifty miles of Skullyville knew about Marshal Hardwicke striking Amafo. That evening more people crowded into our living room than ever before, some families who had not visited our home in years. The McCurtains, the Folsoms, folks who held high positions going all the way back to Choctaw days in Mississippi.
Brother Willis and his family were there, of course, with his oldest son Samuel, and several used-to-be shopkeepers, who always seemed to be talking about rebuilding their stores. They never recovered after the burnings. Many families had also lost their barns to nighttime fires.
“It’s not the work that keeps everybody from rebuilding,” Pokoni often said. “It’s hard to find the will to start up again after you’ve lost everything.”
“And the fear,” I once heard Amafo say.
Pokoni was dashing to and from the kitchen, trying her best to keep everyone’s cups and bowls filled with hot coffee and steaming pashofa corn soup. Amafo found himself a spot on a step halfway up the stairs to the second floor. He barely moved a muscle, holding his coffee cup with both hands and softly blowing. His hat was pulled low over his eyes, discouraging anyone who might try to draw him into a conversation.
To some, he might seem to be sleeping, but not a word escaped Amafo’s attention. The stakes were high. We were all Skullyville Choctaws, and our lives were threatened by what had occurred.
I learned much by watching Amafo that night. To the hotheaded young men he was as meaningless as a tree stump—an old man whose youth and usefulness were a thing of the past. I saw Amafo bide his time, allowing one argument after another to fizzle and die.
He already knows what he’s going to do, I realized. He will wait all night if he has to, till everyone else has burned themselves out, before he tells us what he’s thinking. For the first time, I saw a Choctaw elder at work. And I understood—for the first time—why our way is a powerful way. It is a way of waiting and watching, and Amafo was as wise in the ways of survival as a great black cat of the woods.
I was determined to stay up and see what Amafo would do. I set about helping Pokoni. We washed empty cups, of coffee and pashofa both, refilled them and returned them to our guests before they knew they were gone. All this we did without a word between us.
The hours dragged on. It was approaching midnight when I heard Mister Yeager cough, like he always did when he had something to say. He had spent his younger days chasing bootleggers with the Lighthorsemen, our Choctaw posse. “Sure we are peaceable folks,” he said. “We’re churchgoers, all of us, and we gonna do the Lord’s will, best we know it.”
He nodded in the direction of Brother Willis, with a tone of embarrassed humility. Brother Willis appeared not to respond. But if you watched him after everybody else had looked away, you saw him take a deep breath and look into his coffee cup with sad eyes.
I was carrying a tray of coffee cups from the living room to the kitchen, where Pokoni was washing with a fury. When Mister Yeager spoke, she dried her soapwater hands on her apron and moved to the doorway to listen.
“I’m just saying we ought to keep our guns near our bedsides,” he said. “We got to protect ourselves from the Nahullos, all of ’em. We can’t let our guard down.”
I sat the tray on the kitchen counter and asked Pokoni, “Why would they want to hurt us? It was a Nahullo that hit Amafo.”
She leaned towards me and whispered, “Hon, listen good to what I’m telling you. People who are bullies are driven to punishing those they have harmed the most. And the bullying will usually get worse.
“Look around you. These Choctaw families are gathered together at our house for safety. By the time the marshal and his friends spread their talk about what happened at the train station, every Nahullo in Spiro will be fussing and fuming. More than likely they gonna blame us, hon. But the real thing we got to worry about is this. Choctaw hotheads, that’s where the real danger is. All Choctaws are not like your grandfather.”
She stepped to the sink, saying, “Now. I’ll wash, you dry, and let’s make up for lost time.”
Ten minutes later my nineteen year-old cousin Wilbur burst through the front door. “We know where the marshal lives,” he shouted. “Let’s see how he likes a board upside the head.”
Everybody grew nervous thinking about Wilbur taking a board to the marshal. They knew the marshal would kill him and go unpunished.