Katy Smith - Free Men

“You got a gun?” I ask.

He nods.

“So which one you use?” I point to the bow that curves around his back.

“Whatever is — what do you say, handy? Closest to hand. It depends also who is around to hear.”

“And you’re doing this all by yourself? Where are the others? Don’t the women come sometimes and cook you meals?”

He stops and listens again. I’d get tired of hearing as many things as an Indian does.

“Where exactly you running to?”

He snaps his head back to me like I was a deer crunching through the wood. “I’m merely hunting,” he says.

“Doesn’t seem to me like you’d get much on your own. Say you nab a deer and then another, how you expect to tote them around? You’re strong, I’d bet, but I don’t see you dragging a bouquet of carcasses all around. Maybe you’re still hammering out your plan, that it? Waiting to see what opportunities walk past? I’ll tell you now, I don’t have none of my master’s money on me. Check my coat.” I start tugging it off, but he frowns.

“I have no interest in you.”

Cat is looking over at us, a wash of fright on his forehead.

“Unless you know a chief of the Chickasaws or Seminoles.”

“What’s going on with them?” I wish he’d sit down, because it’s giving my neck an ache to be peering up at him. Makes him look even more like a statue.

“Eventually I’ll seek an alliance.”

“This is some Indian war foolery. That’s all right, then.”

But he’s not done telling. “I had money from the trade and lost it. Should have led my town, but lost that.”

“How’d you lose the money?” That being more interesting to me.

“It was taken.”

“Stolen? You plan on fetching it back?”

“I need someone to support my cause. And whether that’s another Muskogee town eager for an unseating, or a garrison of Americans, I must buy my way into those talks.”

“I told you,” I say, laughing, but quieter now, “you can’t carry all those skins. Cat’d help you, but he weighs less than a deer.”

“It’s not skins I’ll barter with. Money. It’s coins that move nations now.”

“And how’re you going to get those coins?”

“Ah.” He nearly smiles, I swear he does. “Selling skins?”

Cat is lifting up water with his right hand and pouring it over his left, and back again on the other side. He’s easier now that the Indian has loosened.

I say maybe he could work his way into the employ of my master, since there’s a man who’ll be hard up for a trader soon. I’ve known Indians who got snatched into slavery, though, so he’d need to strike a deal on his tiptoes. He listens and nods, and it’s almost a relief to know he’s still figuring. Same as me.

“And once you get that money and a bunch of men to get your town back, what’re you going to do then? Start yourself a little shop?”

He finally sits down beside me, letting go of whatever the forest was sounding like, and breaks off some tall grass to roll between his fingers. “Become chief,” he says.

I nod. There’s a dream , I think. Running away, running to — all dreams.

I pick at him with a few more questions but he won’t talk about it anymore. I tell him I’d vote for him for chief. If I look half as handsome and proud in my foolishness as he does, well, it’s enough to make you think we’ll get wherever it is we’re going, nothing to be scared of, no bother that we’re fugitives and penniless. I peek over at Cat to see how he compares and decide if you gave him a new suit and a haircut and slapped a smile on his face he’d be no less than a ladies’ man, with those big blue eyes and that moony way. The Lord doesn’t make ugly fates for such good-looking men.

The Indian sees me looking at Cat and asks again if I think the white man’s a killer. I whistle and throw up my hands. Out of his bag he pulls some bread that’s hard as stone and calls Cat over, showing us how to dip it in water to soften it up, and then it tastes nice and beany and we thank him for it, or I do and Cat just gobbles it like a wild person. The sun’s getting low, so he starts back to the road and we fall in line, Cat coming close behind me. Sometimes he walks near enough that I think he’s about to reach out for my hand. The dirt here is so red that it lights our way.

We crest the bank and climb back down to the road and are about a mile farther south when Istillicha stops and Cat stops and even I hear it: tomp, tomp , the sound of metal shoes on earth.

A trading party, or travelers, Istillicha says, coming behind us, down the road we took but faster. I start toward the bank, but he holds up his hand like this time he wants to see who it is. We wait.

Four white men in English coats, two brownish men, the poor kind who carry or haul or dig, and three black like me, but wearing Indian clothes. They must be Creek slaves coming along to tell the other men where to step. The white man on the first bay horse has a heavy, pleased face. He pulls up and the others stop, the men on horses prancing, the mules behind shifting around with the heavy weight of loaded bags. Istillicha, who’s standing in front of me, has his head pointed at that first white man like a bloodhound. He must know him, or think he knows him. One of the black men says hello to Istillicha, shaking him out of himself, and they talk for a bit in Creek tongue, him pointing south and them nodding.

The white man interrupts. “Can he tell us where to find fresh water? A stream or other clear place.”

Later, the Indian will tell me this is Kirkland, a man he’d heard of, who’d passed through his town a few days before, and the young folks with him he figures are his son and nephew, all bound for Pensacola.

The white man shouts like we’re all hard of hearing. “We are travelers from Carolina bound for West Florida. These men from Hillaubee, near the Tallapoosa, are guiding us. We have no trade, but only wish to move forward in peace. Do you know where we can find water, sir?”

Istillicha points to the fourth white man, the one who isn’t Kirkland or his son or his nephew. He still doesn’t say anything, hiding that he speaks English fine, and I shift back and forth on my feet, wondering if this is how wars start, with rude fingers.

Kirkland turns awkwardly in his saddle, looking back at the man in question. “Thomas Colhill,” he says, “trader to the Creeks.”

Istillicha drops his arm and I’m still standing behind him so I can’t see his face, but his knees take a quick dip, less than a bend even, but just like something suddenly went soft beneath him. Who is Thomas Colhill to shake my Indian’s knees? Just looks like a regular medium white man, with quick dark eyes. His face is blank, like he’s never been guilty of anything. We all wait for Istillicha to say something, to stop standing in the middle of a road like a warrior, stiff, heart-fast. I look at Cat to make sure he doesn’t run.

One of the mules hears a rustle in the bush, maybe a fox, and when it skips to one side, its bags go clink clink , clear as bells, and the black and brown men look down and off to one side and the white men keep looking at Istillicha like nothing has happened, that sound doesn’t sound like anything to them, and as I freeze up, something melts in Istillicha, and somehow without anyone saying a word but that little fox in the woods, the game has changed.

“There is water a mile back,” Istillicha says. “The creek flows east of the road. A path in the brush will lead you there.”

He points north again, politely now. Kirkland glances at me and Cat skulking in the back. His bay snorts, and Kirkland nods. The men turn their beasts around and with every shuffle and sidestep the bags go clink clink clink .