How i became a ghost, p.2
How I Became A Ghost, page 2
It happened after midnight.
I felt no shiver. This was real.
I smelled smoke and jumped out of bed. The room was dark, but I could smell the smoke. It was behind me so I turned around. The smoke was still behind me. I turned around again. The smoke was still behind me. I turned around and around. I was scared now.
Why couldn’t I see the smoke? I wanted to scream.
I felt the skin of my neck burning. My long hair was in flames! I heard a loud crack and fire fell from the ceiling. I grabbed my blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders, smothering the flames.
When I opened the door, a cloud of fire hit me in the face. I ran through the flames and out the front door. My mother and father and Luke stood in the yard. Jumper was there, too. He leapt in my arms.
“We thought you ran out back,” my mother said. “We called for you. The smoke was so thick.”
The roof of our house was burning. Bright specks of fire floated in the night sky.
“Run next door and wake the neighbors!” my father said. “They can help us put the fire out.”
Luke and I ran to the neighbor’s house, but it was burning, too. We flung open the door and ran inside. Everybody was still sleeping.
“Wake up!” Luke shouted. With squeals and screams our neighbors jumped out of bed and fled their burning house.
“Run to the church and ring the bell!” said my father. “Wake everybody up!”
Luke and I started for the church, but my father stopped us.
“Wait! Look there.” He was pointing to the river. Men rode horses from the river, Nahullo men, and they carried burning torches. While we watched, they rode to the church. They leapt from their horses and threw the torches high, aiming for the house where the missionaries lived.
We stood in the street watching, my family and our neighbors. The torches made slow circles, turning over and over, followed by a trail of sparks. Like fiery comets, twenty flaming torches fell from the sky. They landed on the roof of the house and the dry cedar boards burst into flames.
The missionaries were visiting another Choctaw town that week, but the Nahullos didn’t know that. They would have burned the house down with the missionaries inside asleep.
A Nahullo man ran into the church and climbed the ladder to the bell tower. He dropped his torch on the roof and soon the church was a swirling mass of flames.
What about the Bibles? I thought. And the songbooks?
The men shouted and pointed to us. One man took his shotgun from his horse and aimed it at my family. My father threw himself over us and we fell to the ground.
Pow! The noise from the shot was loud.
“Ohhhh,” a neighbor shouted.
My face was covered in blood, the blood of our nextdoor neighbor. His shoulder was bleeding. My father took off his shirt and wrapped it around him.
“Run,” my father said, “and stay together.” We hurried to the deep woods at the end of town. The Nahullo men jumped on their horses and followed us.
When we entered the woods, my father pushed us into a clump of bushes. We knelt and huddled close together. My father whispered in my ear.
“Take a deep breath and do not move.” I nodded and sucked in the cold night air. Jumper climbed under my shirt. My father put his hand behind my head and pushed my face to the ground. He did this to protect me.
I lay with my face on the wet ground. A man rode his horse into the woods. He was so close. I could have reached out and touched the hoof of his horse. Even Jumper knew to be quiet. I felt him warm against my belly.
“I don’t see them!” the man yelled.
“Let them go,” said another man. “They will wander around in the swamps till we find ’em. No place else for them to go. Their homes are burning.”
“We should have done this a long time ago,” he whispered to himself, but we were close enough to hear him.
We stayed in the bushes all night and watched the houses burn. The flames made a crackling sound and by morning every house had fallen to the ground.
I learned something about houses that night. This will sound strange. On the night I almost became a ghost, I learned something about houses.
Houses are alive.
Every house shook before it fell. Like Jumper shaking water after a swim, every house shook. Every house shouted, too. As loud as the thunder, every house also shouted. One by one, every house shouted and fell.
I lay on the ground with my father, my mother, my brother Luke, and Jumper. Our neighbors crouched on the ground nearby. We watched our houses shout and shake and fall.
“I wonder if anyone burned in their house,” Luke said.
“The Jonahs,” I told him. “Mister Jonah and Missus Jonah.”
“How do you know that?” Luke asked.
I did not answer him.
My mother looked at me. Of course, she knew. She knew everything.
“There is nothing we can do,” my father said.
“We can stay together,” said my mother.
Chapter 5
Swamp Choctaws
“WE SHOULD GO NOW,” my father said. “If we wait till morning they could find us.”
We walked deeper into the woods, far away from town. We knew where we were going. For Choctaws, the safest place was the swamp. Nahullos never came to the swamp. We hunted there. We fished there. Whenever we wanted to be safe we always went to the swamp.
All night we walked the muddy ground. The trees were thick and covered with vines and thorny bushes grew everywhere. We arrived at the swamp as the sun was rising.
We were not alone. Every Choctaw from our town, those who were still alive, had come to the swamp. The old women were limping as they walked, and I remembered their dance on the stony river bottom.
The swamp water was green and sticky. I carried Jumper, and we crossed the swamp on logs and old wooden planks.
“Let me swim!” Jumper said.
“No,” I told him. “The water is dirty green. You can’t shake swamp water off.”
By morning, a hundred Choctaws gathered on the island in the middle of the swamp. My father led us to a thick pine tree. Old Man and Old Woman from the sandy river bottom sat at the base of the tree. Old Man stood up and everybody hushed.
“We can talk about last night later. Now we go to work. Young men will get the meat. Deer and squirrels are all around us. The swamp is full of fish.
“Young women will look for wild onions and berries. Older men will build houses, lean-tos. Winter is coming. We will spend the day working and have our first meal tonight.”
“What will the older women do?” a young man asked. Everyone grew very quiet. No one looked at him. They were too embarrassed. Old Man smiled.
“The older women do not need me to tell them what to do,” he said.
When the gathering was over, my father spoke to Luke and me. “I’ll build us a lean-to. You two see what you can catch for supper.”
I was only ten years old, but I could catch a squirrel with a blowgun. Luke and I hollowed out two long stalks of river cane. Using a sharp stone for a knife, we carved darts from tree limbs and tied bird feathers to one end.
“I think we’re ready,” Luke said. “Let’s see if they work. You go first.”
I stuck a dart in my blowgun and lifted it to my mouth. Aiming at a skinny pine tree twenty feet away, I took a deep breath and blew. The dart stuck in the tree trunk!
“Good shot,” Luke said.
“See how close you can get to my dart,” I challenged him.
Luke got a serious look on his face. He loaded his dart, took his breath, and blew. The dart missed the tree, didn’t even come close, but I didn’t fall for it. I knew Luke was a better shot than that.
“You did that on purpose,” I said. Luke laughed and slapped my shoulder.
“Hoke,” he said. “You’re a smart little brother, Isaac. Let’s go hunting.”
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Jumper said.
Jumper dashed to a clump of trees on the far end of the swamp island. Luke and I hurried after him. Jumper circled a tall pine and jumped up and down, growling and scratching the tree trunk.
“Good boy, Jumper,” said Luke. We heard a scattering of leaves and the chirping of squirrels.
By suppertime we had enough squirrels to feed the family.
While we were hunting, my father and his friends had built the lean-tos. They cut pine limbs, tied the limbs together with vines, and leaned them against the giant cypress trees. By nightfall, every Choctaw family had a home. Not real homes, not like before, but when it rained we could stay dry.
With blowguns we caught our food. With lean-tos we had a place to sleep. Young women found wild onions and leafy green vegetables, while the older women dug cooking holes. They covered the holes with green branches so the Nahullos couldn’t see our cooking fires.
That is how we lived. A week later, winter came. Night and day we shivered from the cold wind and icy rainfall.
And every day I grew closer to being a ghost.
Chapter 6
Men with Blankets
WE WERE NOT AFRAID of the Nahullos in the swamp. Nahullos didn’t know the swamp. Snakes and alligators lived in the swamp, and it was hard to tell the ground from a mudhole. We Choctaws knew to be careful, with every step, but the Nahullos didn’t know the swamp.
But winter changed everything. The swamp froze in the winter. Snakes slept underground and even the deepest mudholes turned to ice. The Nahullos could ride their horses over the frozen swamp.
One morning I woke up and the world was white.
Even before I opened my eyes I felt the white. Everything was quiet, and I peeped through the branches of our lean-to. Ice hung from the trees and mounds of snow covered the ground.
This was a warning. On this white day, many people would become ghosts. Many of the old men and women would become ghosts, and many children, too.
“Be very quiet,” my mother said. “Nahullos are coming.” I looked for my father, but he was gone. I held Jumper close.
I heard the horses first. They snorted and wheezed, and soon I heard the wagons. The wooden wagon wheels crunched and cracked the ice. I was afraid. Everyone was afraid. My father came into the lean-to.
“Stay here,” he said.
The wagons slowly crossed the swamp and came into our lean-to town. Everyone hid. We were so quiet. We looked through the branches.
The men on the wagons were Nahullo soldiers. They wore uniforms. They jumped to the ground and reached for something in the wagons.
“Guns,” Luke said. “They will shoot us.”
“Shhhh,” my mother whispered.
When the men turned around, they didn’t have guns. They had blankets and they smiled. We were all freezing from the cold and the Nahullo soldiers had blankets.
“The blankets are for you!” a soldier shouted.
At first no one moved.
“Come and get the blankets!” another soldier yelled.
Old Man was the first Choctaw to leave his lean-to. Old Woman followed after him. The soldier smiled and gave Old Man a blue blanket. Old Man wrapped himself in the blanket and turned around for everyone to see.
“Nice and warm. Yakoke,” said Old Man.
Old Woman took the second blanket and threw it over her shoulders.
“Yakoke,” she said. She buried her head in the blanket and shook with joy.
Many Choctaws ran for the blankets. Mothers and children took the blankets. Fathers took enough blankets for everyone in their lean-to.
“Yakoke!” they told the soldiers. “Thank you!”
When I tried to leave our lean-to, my mother grabbed my arm and pulled me back inside.
“Sit down,” she told me.
“I want a blanket,” I said.
My mother held my head on her shoulder. She ran her hand through my hair, and I felt warm next to her. “We do not need their blankets,” she whispered in my ear.
Luke tried to run for a blanket, but my mother pulled him back, too. She drew him inside the lean-to.
“Sit next to me,” she said.
Luke sat on one side of my mother and I sat on the other. My father stood over us and watched. No one left our lean-to that morning.
“We do not need their blankets.” My mother whispered this. Over and over she whispered, “We do not need their blankets.”
After the soldiers left, everyone was happy. For a few days, everyone was happy.
“We don’t have to be afraid anymore,” Old Man shouted.
“We can build our fires high!” said Old Woman.
Our neighbors left their lean-tos and visited and laughed. Jumper barked and played with the other dogs. But my father and mother were not happy, not like the others. We were still freezing cold.
“Luke and Isaac, stay in the lean-to,” my father said. “Do not go near anybody. Stay here.”
While everybody else slept that night, my father and Luke went hunting. They returned with two small squirrels, and we cooked them over the fire for breakfast.
Old Man saw the smoke from our cooking fire and stuck his head under our lean-to.
“Come outside,” he said. “I’ll share my blanket.”
I looked at his face. I felt the warm shiver from inside, like before. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, Old Man was not smiling. His face was red and swollen and a red sore lay next to his nose. Then another sore appeared, on his lip. Soon his cheeks were covered in sores.
Old Man fell to the ground. He rolled out of his blanket and buried his face in the snow.
“I don’t want to see this!” I shouted. I covered my face with my hands.
“What is wrong with you?” Luke said. He pulled my hands apart. When I looked up, Old Man was staring at me. The sores were gone.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I am sorry. I am cold, that’s all.” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell him what I knew. I knew that Old Man and Old Woman would soon be ghosts.
I almost became a ghost that day. If my mother hadn’t pulled me back, I would have become a ghost.
How could my mother have known?
Years later, after I did become a ghost, I asked myself.
How did she know?
Chapter 7
Snow Monsters
HOKE. EVERYTHING WAS sad, rotten sad. I was ten years old. This was no way to live! In many ways, when you are ten years old, you are smarter than grown-ups. But sometimes your parents are smart, too.
The very next day, my father and mother were smart. After breakfast (more squirrel), they looked at each other for a long time. I knew they had something planned.
“Luke, Isaac, we are going for a walk, without your mother,” my father said. “Isaac, carry Jumper. Hold him tight and don’t let him go.”
We climbed out of the lean-to and walked away from the camp. We crossed the icy swamp, on the far side of the island.
“Careful,” my father warned. “Do not fall through the ice!”
Jumper wiggled, trying to get free.
“I want to run,” Jumper said. “Let me go!”
“Not yet,” I told him.
We walked for almost an hour.
“Now,” my father said, “let Jumper go. He’s ready to run.”
“You heard your father,” Jumper said. “Let me down!”
I dropped him and Jumper took off running.
“I am faster than you are,” Jumper called over his shoulder. I had to laugh. Of course, he was faster than me! I ran after him anyway. I tripped over a log covered in snow and rolled and tumbled.
“Be careful!” my father shouted.
When I came to my feet, my face was covered in snow. Luke laughed and pointed at me.
“You are a snow monster!” he said.
I didn’t know what a snow monster was. I just knew I didn’t like being called one. I grabbed a handful of snow and rolled a snowball.
Hoke. You are smart enough to know what I did next. I threw the snowball at Luke. He ducked and the snowball hit my father — in the face!
This was bad, real bad. I had never hit my father with a snowball. I stood and waited.
“Uh-oh,” Luke said.
“Uh-oh,” Jumper said.
We waited to see what my father would do. First he stepped behind a tree. Luke and I looked at each other.
“This is strange,” Jumper said.
The tree was covered in icicles and we heard cracking sounds. My father was breaking icicles from the branches. We stood still for a long time. What happened next was scary, really scary.
“Grrrr!” A low growling sound came from behind the tree.
“Grrrrrrrr!” The sound grew louder.
“I don’t like this,” Jumper said.
Without warning, something jumped from behind the tree!
“I am the real snow monster!” the thing yelled.
The snow monster wore my father’s clothes. He had no hands. Icicles poked from his sleeves, where his fingers should be. And his head was made of snow.
The snow monster ran after us. He waved his arms and icicles flew all around us. He tackled Luke. They both rolled in the snow.
“Grrrr!” the thing yelled.
“Where is your father?” Jumper asked.
“No time for talking,” I said. “Run!”
“Help!” Luke shouted.
“You are on your own,” said Jumper. “I do not fight snow monsters!”
I thought the snow monster was my father, but Jumper and I didn’t wait to see. We hid behind a big rock and clung to each other. The snow monster dragged Luke behind the tree. We heard more cracking sounds.
“Grrrrr!” That was the snow monster growling.
“Grrrrrrrr!” That sounded like Luke, growling like a snow monster.
I knew what was about to happen. Big Snow Monster jumped out: “Grrrr!”
When Little Snow Monster appeared, I laughed. It was scary, but I laughed anyway.
