Fire in beulah, p.13
Fire in Beulah, page 13
As the Model T picked up speed on the open prairie, Althea’s vision of herself transformed. Now she was a gracious philanthropist, broadly renowned in Saint Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans: far beyond Oklahoma’s dusty borders. She saw herself moving tenderly along a row of iron beds in a dreary orphanage, and as she passed, the little pinched white faces darkened, became Indian for a time, and then colored, and Althea gently touched the little dark hands reaching through the iron bars, for her largess as patron and benefactor knew no prejudice, just as it knew no bounds.
She was lost in this new vision when the automobile began to slow, the engine popping, and Althea coughed as the boiling dust suddenly caught up with and surrounded the abruptly slowing Ford. Through the coppery haze she could see his lean figure standing in the dirt track with legs akimbo and his two arms stretched laconically overhead, reaching up and outward, a lanky X. The black fear swelled over her. She’d known. Of course she’d known. It was all completely recollected, and yet strange, like the familiar, unplaceable sense of a present moment relived from the past, already seen. He had followed, hidden in the railcar, a wagon, on the bouncing gate of a sputtering truck, and part of the time walking, and all the time she’d felt it; somewhere within herself, she had known.
The two men in the front seat said nothing as Japheth sauntered toward them, smiling as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be found standing on a dirt track at nearly sunset in the middle of nowhere.
“Evening, fellas. Could you give a man a lift?” His smile widened as he reached for the handle on the passenger’s side.
Franklin turned to his wife for guidance or explanation, but she only stared back at him, mute. He glanced at his partner then, whose face was baffled, suspicious. Franklin blurted sort of helplessly, “Jim, this is Althea’s brother.…” He still didn’t know the fellow’s name.
Looks to me like I ought to known them. Their faces ought to been so burnt in my mind I couldn’t help it, or hers ought to been, but I didn’t think a thing, only what in the world is that noisy stinking tooloud horseless carriage doing, come boiling up the road and into my yard scaring the daylights out my chickens. But I ought to known, and I can’t quit thinking on that, still yet, all these years later, because before ever I heard that rattly old Model T coming, before I seen the dust on the horizon even, Bluford’s dogs had already set in to howl.
The yellowhair fellow climbed out the seat first, come walking so nice toward me across the yard. The other dogs kept barking, but old Bone slunk up wagtail at him and try to lick his hand, and see, now, that too caught me off guard, because what I seen in that yellowhair gentleman and what Bone seen might of been the truth on that one day out of his life only, but I do know it for true: that whiteman didn’t mean me no harm. I wasn’t in the least afraid.
Let me tell you something my daddy used to tell me. He’d always say, One thing Indians got over colored is they don’t fear the whiteman. My daddy’d say, An Indian’ll go on and die before he let the whiteman make a slave of him, and that is on account of he ain’t afraid. My daddy had a powerful respect towards Indians on account of that one issue. You never going to see the KuKlux after the Indian, he’d say, because you can’t scare an Indian to make him act like you want to, you can’t do nothing but kill him. Well, I have seen Indians scared of whitefolks, but it ain’t in the same way. Indians I’ve known—and I count my two husbands among them—they don’t carry the same kind of wicked in their souls, and so they don’t have any way to fathom how downright evil whitefolks can be. They don’t even have words in their language for how whitefolks act. I’m not saying you won’t find a bad Indian, because you sure will—murderous as a rattler if he want to be, and jealous-hearted, Lord God, it’s a disgrace how jealous-hearted and wicked some of them can be to each other. But they’re not wicked the same way as whitefolks.
All right, I’ll tell it to you like this: to me, what I think, at the beginning of the world the whiteman got caught in a stickyball of stuff, just gummed on the material world like he glued to it with pine-tar, and he get greedy, let greed swell up and suck him in till it won’t turn him loose, and that’s one of the things make him to act so evil. The Holy Word say that, just exactly: The love of money is the root of all evil. You heard that all your life, I guess. What else make somebody want to own all the land on the whole earth if it ain’t greed? I know greed ain’t the only kind of evil, but it is sure one that do make people act a terrible sneaking lowdown kind of vicious, and I never seen a greedy fullblood in my life, except only some of them greedy for whiskey, and that’s howcome them not to be afraid of whitefolks in the same kind of way. I tell you something else, too: the reason they used to have their black slaves to parley with whitefolks in the old days is because blackfolks do understand that particular kind of evil, because they got that same room in their own souls. I can’t trouble myself about what you want to hear or you don’t want to hear. You ask me to tell the truth, long as I can open my mouth, that’s what I’m going to speak. How you think I know it if I’m not telling it on myself?
But look here: if you’re a person able to know evil, if you been given the means to recognize evil, and it come walking across the yard at you, then, if you got any bit of sense in the world, you better be afraid. And right yonder on that day, I wasn’t. I’d seen enough from whitefolks by that time to respect how much harm they can do you, some of them—this was 1920, remember. The nightriders was having a big time in Oklahoma right then. They’d lynched a man at Oklahoma City not a week before, and I sure enough did know about it—we didn’t have telephones, no way to get around but a plowmule if we was lucky and our own two feets if we wasn’t, which was most of us, but word got around fast back then. We known about the Holdenville lynching—that happened that same year—Sable Merryweather come walking over the field to tell me about it when that man wasn’t two hours dead. So you’d think I’d been more cautious when a carload of whitefolks come rumbling up in my yard, even allowing I didn’t sense a thing evil in that yellowhair fellow but only just the color of his skin.
But, no, I’m going to stand on my porch and look at him walking crost my yard, I just nod at him, say, How do, mister. Nice evening. Y’all lost?
He say, No, ma’am, I don’t believe so.
I only had a whiteman call me ma’am twice in my life, and both times it was nothing but trouble follow after, and that was the first time, and, yes, I got skittish then, finally—but I should of been way more than skittish. I should of been protecting myself. I should of seen them and known them from the first minute they driven up in my yard. Probably I couldn’t even tell you when he and she climbed out the car and come over, because I’s standing there talking to that Mister Dedmeyer, or I ought to say listening, because he the one do all the talking, and that’s what else I mean about being off my guard. He talk all around everything—the weather, which that evening wasn’t nothing but average, just hot and humid. He say, Look yonder at that sunset, which was pretty-looking, yes, but just normal for any sunset got clouds building in the west, big bank of thunderheads rising yonder toward Depew. He talk about Bluford’s dogs and reach his hand down till they every one hush except Tennie. She slink off out by the privy and snarl and growl from the back side of it till that car finally drive on out the yard, and Bluford, he always did say that’s the smartest dog he know anything about, and I ought to taken one look at Tennie and shut my ears clean up to that man.
I don’t know howcome me to stand there and listen. You got to act like you listening, sure, but I had learnt the trick long before then how to open my ears just enough to nod at the right place, make them think I’s listening, keep my ears shut enough I’m not going to start to believe something I know better, which if you listen hard at them they can sure make you do. I have seen that, more than a few times. You listen much to whitefolks, you’ll be believing no telling what. And, see, that’s just what happen.
Oh, you think the devil of greed can’t get you, but let me tell you something: the devil can shape hisself anyhow he want. If you hadn’t steeled yourself with prayer and smoke and right thinking, he’s going to jump up and snatch you out before you know what you’re about. He can make hisself look like a nice yellowhair whiteman don’t mean you a bit of harm, and it might be that whiteman don’t mean you anything but just to set you in the middle of the road so he can drive over you on his way to getting whatever little bit of something you got. And it weren’t a little bit of something, it were a lot of something, which I didn’t know, but if I’d been listening to hear only what-all I ought to known and not what-all that man want me to believe, I might could’ve stopped what was coming right then.
Lord God.
You picture it. Three whitemens and a whitewoman dressed up like sixty and covered in roaddust, stand around in a colored woman’s yard saying ma’am and talking so particular and polite, and that colored woman just go right along with them. You think I didn’t know they want something out of me? You think I believe they drive fourteen miles from the nearest whitetown to pass the time of day? What make me act like a fool with no better sense than to spill out her business? I been studying the answer to that question a long time.
Afterwhile Mister Dedmeyer start in talking some words I do not comprehend, all letters and numbers, but he say two things I known completely, Deep Fork and allotment. You put them two together, you know just what he’s talking about. My allotment run in a little narrow strip right down to that river, and the rest of it was just nothing but scrub and underbrush, what the U.S. government give me for my portion when they tuck up all the land. Bluford carried me yonder once to see it. I looked at that worthless land, say to myself, They want to give us freedmen what the Indians won’t take. They aim us to sit on a piece of land you can’t give to nobody but the sorriest old white trash or a fool. I just shake my head, we come on back to our little place at Iron Post, and me and Bluford just go on living just how we was. Probably him and me never thought another word about it, not even when all these mixedbloods from here to Sapulpa been driving around in new motorcars they bought with lease money, because me and Bluford, the two of us together, we known better than that. But he’s dead. My Bluford’s dead, and looks like he taken ever lick of sense we had between us right into the grave with him.
Whiteman talking about my allotment, and me there on the porch, I opens my ears to every last word. He say four hundred dollars, I hears four hundred dollars. He say twenty years, I hears twenty years. He say fair percentage, I hears fair. I hears fair. You see what I mean? I hears it, and believes it, and you tell me when ever on this earth whitefolks intend fair with colored or Indian. Tell me when ever they even know what the word mean. And look at me yonder, I’m going to stand there and say, Yessuh, oh, yes, massah, where you want me to sign? Which is not the words I told them, but it might as well been. What I said was, Yes, that do sound like my land. And, No, sir, I never leased out the mineral rights. Far as I know, nobody ever come and asked.
You see how the minute I let my ears open, that just shut my eyes blind. Still I didn’t recognize her or him either one, not even when he start to talk Indian. Oh, yes, that one. One I ought to seen for a snake if I seen anything, the devil’s own progeny, which these own two hands helped birth into the world, Lord forgive me, that very one: he stand there and talk Creek to me. And he ain’t going to talk nice like Mister Dedmeyer about sunsets and yard dogs and fair percentage, he set right in to talk about Bluford, am I sure he’s dead or didn’t he maybe just go off and leave me, and how many children we got and was we married ‘cording to whitelaw or just Indian, do Bluford have any children from a Creek woman, and things which he got no business to know, and I don’t begin to answer but just shut my mouth tight, won’t say another word to any of them, Creek or English neither one.
They don’t know what he’s saying, them other two whitemens don’t, but they see he’s saying something make me start crawfishing, and they both of them step in front of him, and I mean quick, get in between the two of us and talk English hard and fast as they can talk. I bet you that yellowhair say ma’am fifty times if he say it once, and the other one, the frowny lighthair, he tumble his own words out, say, We going to bring you a contract first thing in the morning, cash money on signing, give you half soon as you put your mark on the paper. Say, Tomorrow morning you going to get two hundred dollars right in your hand.
And look at me there, I’m going to stand there and keep listening, let that he-devil and his sister do deals with me right in my yard. Don’t matter if it was the other two talking, it was them two behind it, and I should of known it from the beginning. Truth.
Maybe I can’t fault myself I didn’t know him, but I should of known her, I don’t care if it was twenty years nearly since I seen her. She stare at me like she’s trying to place me, got a queer, baffledy look on her face, every once in a while she kind of brush the air in front of her, like gnats are flying—but me, I got my greedy mind on what I’m going to do with a little money, and I never pay any attention to that whitewoman, not till they start on off across the yard again and I see her scrawny backside, just how she turn and walk away floating, like she’s in a trance. My heart give a little jump then, there’s a little minute’s recognition, and I just wouldn’t see it, I wouldn’t listen, because I got my mind on how they going to come back tomorrow and bring me two hundred dollars for nothing but just sign a paper, and in my mind all I’m thinking is, I ain’t seen two hundred dollars put together in one place my whole life.
They were an odd quartet: the beautifully dressed husband and wife and the two roughnecks seated contrapuntally at the back table, the dark brother and sister opposite one another, the two fair-haired men facing each other across the white cloth, arguing in hushed voices. Their steaks lay nearly untouched in their bloody juices—all but Franklin’s, which was now only ravaged bits of meat and fat close to the bone. Their coffee had been served. The Negro waiter, uncertain whether to offer dessert, would start toward the table to remove the plates and, seeing one or another take a desultory bite, would immediately retreat to stand at attention near the kitchen doorway again. But the hunger that radiated from the table was unsated, for the powerful appetites had nothing to do with food.
The brother gazed at his own reflection in the large gilt mirror on the back wall, observing that glee was a hard thing for a man to keep to himself. Even when a fellow remembers not to smile, Japheth mused, it’s hard to hide the glow in the eyes and the complexion. He shifted his gaze to his sister’s face. Althea wouldn’t meet him but stared, glittery and attentive, at the two partners hunched toward one another.
“I’m telling you we’ve got to get back out there first thing!” Franklin rasped. He struggled to keep his voice down, although an interested listener could have picked up that the partners had scouted a promising location, as well as the even more attractive fact that they hadn’t yet secured the lease. Bristow, of course, was an oil town: interested listeners lurked everywhere. “Drive me out to the old lady’s cabin first,” he whispered; “then you can go track down Ben Koop.”
“He’s way the hell and gone up to Osage country, take me a day and a half to get there.”
“Can’t you reach him by phone?”
Jim Dee didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer.
“Take the train, then. I’ll drive your old Ford.”
“You tend to your business, I’ll tend to mine.”
“You know damn well we’ve got nothing until we’ve got her mark. What do you expect me to do, walk?” Franklin ran his hands through his thick hair, blonder than the partner’s, his face ruddier: a beefy, thickened version of the other. He leaned over his plate, spoke slowly. “There’s no goddamn train to Iron Post.”
He’s the more ruthless of the two, Japheth thought. And the softer. His gaze drifted to Jim Logan, who sat silent now, sullen and restless, one leg jittering beneath the table as he knifed butter onto a dinner roll so furiously the soft bread turned doughy and mangled. Few pleasures gave Japheth more satisfaction than perusing another’s secret nature, and he sipped his coffee as he studied the partner. This one, he said to himself, amused, realizing the similarity for the first time, is very much like the very famous, very late Roy Belton.
The memory flashed: his own ex-partner standing on the dark road with the hijacked cabdriver on the ground before him, and yes, it’d been Roy Belton’s rash anger, his restless, withholding silences, his fidgety nature that had pushed him to fire the pistol twice, stupidly, in Homer Nida’s belly—enough to kill the cabbie, not enough to kill him quick. The hack driver had taken four long, stupid days to die, long enough to name his hijackers, so of course they’d caught Belton in Nowata and brought him to the Tulsa jail, from which the good citizens had taken him and carried him out to that same spot on the Red Fork road, and lynched him. I told him and told him, Japheth said to himself, a fellow’s got to learn how to hold his temper.
His attention returned to the two men. Japheth had an unerring sense for the concealed lives of others, a kind of second sight that allowed him to know what people tried to keep hidden, and he saw that the husband was hiding something now. Not ambition; not the merciless depths he’d go to in order to satisfy that craving: those were excellent traits in a good oilman. What Franklin Dedmeyer strove to keep secret was his smallness, the pinched parsimony that derived from that ambition. It wasn’t money Franklin was tight with, but information, and that was a characteristic despised among insiders in the business of oil. Even now he was keeping certain facts from his partner, which was part, Japheth saw—although only part—of the other’s long resentment. He took another sip of coffee, savoring for a moment his developing knowledge. The smile broadened behind the fragile rim of china cup as his gaze returned to his sister. And you, my dear, are so filled with secrets as to be a transparency to me. I know your little tawdry wants, and to what lengths you’ll go to satisfy them. I know your unpitying nature and where you’ve come from, which, above everything, you’d like to keep hidden. As if feeling his eyes on her face, Althea turned to him, and instantly looked away—but not before Japheth saw the fear there, and this gave him the greatest pleasure of all.
