Stone river crossing, p.1
Stone River Crossing, page 1
More praise for
STONE RIVER CROSSING
“Tim Tingle’s sure-footed storytelling in Stone River Crossing offers up action, humor, suspense, and a tolerable amount of romance. This historical novel is a deft blending of the supernatural and the everyday as well as a timely reminder that we’re all in this together.”
— Chris Barton, author of Shark vs. Train and Whoosh!
“Only master Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle could create such a moving tale of friendship reaching across the Bok Chitto River.”
— Dawn Quigley, PhD, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation, author of Apple in the Middle
Table of Contents
map
Chapter 1
Stone River Crossing
Chapter 2
Martha Tom Meets Lil Mo
Chapter 3
Walking on the Water
Chapter 4
The Strangest Wedding Ever (for Lil Mo)
Chapter 5
The Promised Land
Chapter 6
Stranger on a Dark Horse
Chapter 7
Last Meal Together
Chapter 8
Running While Invisible
Chapter 9
Bound for the Promised Land
Chapter 10
Lil Mo’s New Friends
Chapter 11
Lil Mo’s Family on the Freedom Side
Chapter 12
Better Run, Harold
Chapter 13
Mr. Porter Goes to Jail
Chapter 14
The Painful Truth
Chapter 15
Laws and Lawbreakers
Chapter 16
Funi Man the Teacher
Chapter 17
Secret Cave of Friendship
Chapter 18
Shonti and the Rattlesnakes
Chapter 19
A Pup for Lil Mo
Chapter 20
Late-Night River Crossing
Chapter 21
Joseph Meets Martha Tom
Chapter 22
Harold Follows Joseph
Chapter 23
Shot in the Dark
Chapter 24
Father and Son
Chapter 25
Zeke and His Father
Chapter 26
Ofijo’s First Day Home
Chapter 27
A New Home for Lil Mo’s Family
Chapter 28
The Bone Pickers
Chapter 29
Friends Ever After
Chapter 30
Martha Tom and the Bone Pickers
Chapter 31
Morning of Budding Romance
Chapter 32
Lil Mo and the Stranger
Chapter 33
Seeds of Doubt
Chapter 34
Who Is This Lil Mo?
Chapter 35
Bad Dreams
Chapter 36
Lil Mo and the Fish People
Chapter 37
Snakes of Shonti
Chapter 38
Witch Hunters
Chapter 39
Whisper and Wait
Chapter 40
Owl at the Cliff
Chapter 41
Falling Body
Chapter 42
Blue Shawl Woman
Chapter 43
House of the Dead
Chapter 44
Not Without Scars
Chapter 45
Koi Losa and the Yannash
Chapter 46
Love Potions
Chapter 47
Wedding Plans
Chapter 48
Surprise for Lil Mo
Chapter 49
Bledsoe in Choctaw Town
Chapter 50
Moonlight Chase
Chapter 51
Crossing a River Is a Beautiful Thing
Glossary and Pronunciation Guide
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Tim Tingle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS Inc., 95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
leeandlow.com
Book design by Neil Swaab
Cover art by Julie Flett
Typesetting by ElfElm Publishing
Ebook production by Abhi Alwar
The text is set in Bembo MT Pro and Nobbin
First Edition
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress
To my grandsons,
Finnegan and Niko,
young Choctaws who,
as fluent Spanish speakers,
cross the river daily
Mississippi Territory, 1808
CHAPTER 1
Stone River Crossing
1808, City of Bok Chitto, Choctaw Nation
“Martha Tom! I have a wedding to cook for today. Get your lazy self out of bed and bring me some blackberries!”
“Oh, Mother,” said Martha Tom. She rolled out of bed and put on her dress, stretching and yawning. “No breakfast today?”
“Yes, you can have your breakfast, but not until you fill this basket with blackberries!” her mother said, giving Martha Tom a basket made of river cane. “And hurry back. The wedding is this afternoon.”
Martha Tom took the basket and stepped through the back door, wiping her eyes and waking up as she walked. She hurried through the woods and soon stood on the banks of the Bok Chitto River.
Her eyes scanned up and down the riverbank for blackberries. Thick clumps of vines wrapped around tree trunks and dangled from rocks lining the shore.
Plenty of vines, she thought, but no berries. They’ve all been picked. She strolled up and down the river, brushing aside the prickly vines. Not a single berry on this side of the river. She shaded her eyes and gazed to the plantation side.
No one ever picks the berries on that side of the river. They’re too busy picking cotton, and the guards never let the slave workers get close to the river.
Martha Tom was forbidden to cross the Bok Chitto River.
She looked over her shoulder at the morning smoke, rising from the cooking fires in Choctaw town. “Everybody’s having breakfast. Everybody but me,” she whispered to herself. No one was watching.
She tilted her head in curiosity and looked across the river at the plantation shore. I wonder what life is like for the slaves, she thought. They are families like us, with mothers and fathers and children. But the guards have long leather whips and holler at them all day long.
A ray of morning sunshine sliced through the trees, and a thicket of purple blackberries sparkled in the sun.
“Mother wants me to pick berries, and there they are,” she said aloud. “No one will see me once I’m on the other side.”
Martha Tom had been warned. They all had. The words of her mother seemed to ripple the calm waters.
On the other side of the river lies danger, nothing but danger. You are not to cross the river, ever. The nahollos, the white people, keep slaves to do their work. If you don’t want to be their slave, stay away from the river.
Lured by the blackberries, Martha Tom shook her head and made the warnings go away. She tucked the cane basket under her arm and took a deep breath. With one final look to make certain she was alone, she lifted her skirt and stepped into the river — to the crossing path beneath the waters.
One careful step at a time, Martha Tom crept across the river. The path she trod was a path of stones, impossible to see and rising from the dark river bottom.
The stones rose almost to the top of the river. So that no one could see them — no one but Choctaws — they had built the walkway a foot below the surface of the muddy river, hidden from view. Only the Choctaws knew of the stones.
Once, when she was five years old, Martha Tom was caught playing on the stone walkway, slipping and falling and swimming to the shore.
“Never do that again!” her mother had warned her.
I can’t think about that or I’ll drown, Martha Tom thought. I’m older now. I’m alone, and no one will ever know about today.
She stepped from the stones to the other shore and soon found a blackberry vine, drooping with fat purple berries. She plucked the first berry and tossed it into her mouth, smacking at the tart, delicious taste.
“Mmmm, juicy and almost sweet,” she said. Hunger gnawed at her belly. She ate another.
The first taste of breakfast made her crave more, and Martha Tom ate another berry. Mmmm.
She picked five more berries, placed them in her basket — then one by one popped them in her mouth! When she’d eaten every blackberry in the bushes, she licked her fingers and wiped the juice from her lips. She spotted another clump of black
She soon ate them all.
Deeper into the woods she walked, stooping and picking and tasting her way from one berry vine to another. She lost all track of time. When both the basket and her stomach were full, she looked to the sky. She’d hoped to see smoke rising from the Choctaw cooking fires, but the sky was cloudy, and the trees blocked her view.
With a shiver of fear, Martha Tom realized she was lost. She remembered her mother’s warnings. Martha Tom, you cannot play by the river. You must not be seen on the path. The plantation guards will capture you. They will make you a slave, just like the field workers.
Martha Tom wrapped her arms around the basket and ran.
I can’t be far from the river, she thought.
She burst through the woods into a huge man-made clearing, with trees uprooted and branches sawed off. I’m nowhere near the river! I might never make it home.
CHAPTER 2
Martha Tom Meets Lil Mo
Martha Tom was more afraid than ever. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. She lifted her face and studied the clearing.
Row after row of logs, almost like benches, stretched from one end of the clearing to the other. A sawed-off tree stump stood only a few feet in front of her, surrounded by grapevines. Martha Tom wiped away the tears and sat on the stump.
“I’ll wait here till after dark,” she said. “The clouds will be gone by then and I can find my way home by the moon.”
The sound of cracking branches broke her thoughts. Someone was coming.
Martha Tom dove headfirst into the grapevines.
A skinny, dark-skinned man appeared, hobbling on a cane. He stooped when he walked, and rings of white hair fell from beneath his black hat.
Martha Tom watched as he leaned his cane against the stump and slowly, painfully, climbed to the top. He steadied himself, then looked right and left. He lifted his arms as if waving at people, but they were alone.
Or so it seemed.
What happened next would change Martha Tom’s life forever. The man turned his palms upward and pointed to the trees to his right.
“I am bound for the promised land!” he shouted.
Martha Tom followed his gaze. She saw no one. The leaves bristled, and the tree limbs swayed. Then she heard the voices.
I am bound for the promised land . . .
“Spirit people!” Martha Tom whispered, clapping her hand over her mouth and hoping he had not heard.
He had not. He glanced to his left. “I am bound for the promised land!” he shouted again.
Once more, even louder, the voices sang.
I am bound for the promised land . . .
“Oh, who will come and go with me?” the old man called, raising both arms high and bowing his head.
“We will come and go with you,” replied the voices, lifting like clouds from every tree and bush.
Martha Tom wrapped her arms around her knees, closed her eyes tight, and whispered a prayer. “Please make this morning go away. Let me wake up and be home. I will never disobey my mother again, I promise.”
When Martha Tom opened her eyes, the morning was more alive than ever. People of every age stepped from the trees and entered the clearing. They were families of the enslaved field workers, mothers and fathers and children, and they sang as they walked.
I am bound for the promised land,
I am bound for the promised land,
O, who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.
Martha Tom had never heard music like this before. Everyone sang in beautiful harmony, swaying with the music. It was the calling together of the forbidden slave church, deep in the Mississippi woods. The old man on the stump nodded and everyone stood still, heads bowed and hands clasped together.
Martha Tom froze, hoping no one saw her.
A soft finger tapped her on the shoulder, and she jerked in fear. The biggest man she had ever seen stood over her.
“Are you lost?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You’re Choctaw, from across the river Bok Chitto?”
Martha Tom nodded.
“You are scared, aren’t you?”
Martha Tom was scared, and when she tried to speak, the words refused to come.
“You want to go home?”
She nodded, ten times in a moment, and the man smiled.
“What is your name?”
“Martha Tom.”
“Well, Martha Tom,” he said, kneeling beside her, “you don’t have to be afraid. No one will hurt you. I’ll call my son, and he can take you to the river.” He stood up, looked to the crowd of worshippers, and shouted, “Lil Mo! Come here, son.”
A thin boy of about ten appeared. He looked back and forth from his father to this strange little girl.
“Lil Mo,” his father said, “this is Martha Tom. She’s Choctaw, from across the river. She is lost and afraid. Take her to the riverbank and come back right away. She can find her way across.”
“I better not,” Lil Mo said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid for us, Papa. The guards always tell us to stay away from the river. They say our whole family will get in trouble if they find us there. They’d think we were trying to escape.”
“Son, son,” his father said, touching Lil Mo on the shoulder. “There is a way to move amongst them where they won’t even see you. I should have already taught you, but it’s time you learned. You walk not too fast, not too slow, keep your eyes to the ground, away you go. No one will even see you. It’ll be like you’re invisible. Now, get this little girl to the river.”
Lil Mo stared at the ground, letting his father know he didn’t want to go to the river. “Papa,” he whispered, lifting his face to look at him.
His father gave him a look that said do not disobey me.
Lil Mo nodded and took Martha Tom by the hand. She stood up slowly, biting her lip. She was embarrassed to stand before the churchgoers, but they waved and smiled at her. Martha Tom gave a small wave in reply.
“Come on,” said Lil Mo. “And remember what my papa said. Not too fast, not too slow, eyes to the ground, away we go!”
Lil Mo knew the way to the river, and they soon stood on the shore. “Here we are,” he said. “Where’s your boat?”
“I don’t have a boat,” said Martha Tom.
“Then how did you cross the river?”
“A secret way,” said Martha Tom. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Little girl, I am the best secret keeper you will ever meet,” said Lil Mo. This Choctaw girl was strange, but Lil Mo was beginning to like her.
