Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy

Author:Lalita Tademy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atria Books

Chapter 35

“WE BURY HER proper,” Grampa Cow Tom announced, his voice loud and thick.

He’d been gone three days, disappeared in the direction of the fort while Gramma Amy prepared the body, and finally returned. Rose smelled the stink of spirits on him, triggering vague memories of her father. She’d seen many men drink before, and women too, especially since coming to Fort Gibson, sometimes so deep in their cups that they stumbled as they walked, or soiled themselves and didn’t care. Grampa Cow Tom wasn’t to that stage, but she had never seen him drink at all.

He pulled a small pistol from under his coat, and waved it in the air.

An alarm ran through Rose at the sight of the pistol. She knew what came next, but not like this, not without ceremony. This wasn’t right at all.

Gramma Amy rushed to Grampa Cow Tom’s side, easing the gun from his grip as she helped him sit on the ground. He handed the pistol to her without protest. His head rolled forward toward his chest as if too heavy to hold up.

“Proper,” Gramma Amy promised him. “I’ll hold to the gun till it’s time.”

“I have to give it back,” he said. “And four bullets.” He fished these out of his jacket and gave her those as well.

Amy pocketed the bullets and pistol, and spread her arms wide, circling one hand over her head, as if swinging an imaginary lasso, encompassing their encampment.

“Protect us,” Amy said, her voice firm. “Keep us in the circle of family.”

She gathered a handful of loose dirt and threw bits over her left shoulder, weaving around each family member in a snakelike dance as she softly chanted a wordless tune. Rose gave herself over to her grandmother’s incantations, and followed along behind her, looping as she looped, shuffling as she shuffled. By the time Gramma Amy gave up her chanting, Grampa Cow Tom was already snoring where he lay on the ground, and Rose had worked up a fierce sweat. Rose covered her grandfather with a blanket.

That evening, before dark fell, they put Granny Sarah in the ground. Grampa Cow Tom, more himself after his sleep, dug the hole himself, and after she was safely buried, and the dirt covered the body, he fired the pistol four times. First to the north, then west, then south, and finally east.

Granny Sarah was on her way home.

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