Winding Stair by Douglas C. Jones

Author:Douglas C. Jones [Jones, Douglas C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780451234797
Google: -RwIEQAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0451234790
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2011-12-05T12:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

By dawn, the sky was clear and the sun came hot and blistering. Before the people of the community began to gather, some of the men in our posse washed the mud from Milk Eye Rufus Deer’s face and laid his body on a door unhinged from the barn. They took the rifle we had found in the lane and put it under his folded arms, and one of them with a Kodak box camera snapped his photograph. His eyes were still open.

As though by some prearranged signal, when this ceremony was completed, the people appeared. There were a few whites, but mostly there were Creeks, and they stood in a large circle, well back from the small body still lying on the door, but now without the rifle. That had been handed over to Joe Mountain for safekeeping until our return to Fort Smith.

Their young came with them, and their dogs, all held back a respectful distance. I could see no sign of mourning on their faces. It seemed they came to view some ghastly sideshow that passed only infrequently and wanted the opportunity to tell their grandchildren they had been there. Not a word was spoken. The only sounds were the bleatings of Louie Low Hawk ’s goats behind the barn and somewhere to the west a mourning dove making his low signal that the rain had passed. With the exception of a few men wearing red or yellow neck scarves, they were a colorless group, a study in gray and faded blue or tan work clothes bleached even more by the harsh rising sunlight.

The Creek policemen allowed the people to have their look, and then lifted the body from its resting place and wrapped it in blankets secured with heavy hemp rope.

After they had Milk Eye’s body laid out on the porch, they came inside for Burris Garret. I had some inclination to protest, but decided against it, for he was after all a part of these people although of a different color. They took the cover off him and laid him on the porch near Milk Eye, and it occurred to me that one of the purposes of these long porches was for laying out the dead. Still wordlessly, the people passed by the body of the marshal, and a few of the men took off their hats for a moment. Soon it was over, and they began to disappear, each going back to kitchen or barn or field to begin the day’s work. The policemen wrapped Garret as they had Milk Eye.

I heard a wagon coming near and soon it drew up at one end of the porch. A small man, looking very old but somehow familiar, got down and, with two policemen helping, lifted the body of Milk Eye and slid it into the back of the wagon. I knew this was Old Man Deer, and on the wagon seat, her hat off now and the shawl pulled up over her head like a heavy veil, was the old woman.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.