Yahola! Rebekah and Itcho and the Watchers of the Silent Ones

By Camille Collins

 

I remember her sitting by the window in the small, dark house in Birmingham, the burnished tones of sunset making a reddish glow against the half drawn shade, enveloping her in devil’s light as she chewed her tobacco—a walnut jutting from her still taut cheek—told her stories, and spat, quite elegantly mind you, into a tin cup.

“Yahola, Yahola,” she murmured softly, speaking the name of the wolf, the name of her great-grandfather, or was it her great, great?  She seemed to forget, or grow confused more frequently, leaning back in her chair, eyes suddenly fastened shut, she nodded out with a dense impenetrability, as though seduced by smack dreams—leaving me the unpleasant task of wrenching the cup away before it fell to the floor in an ugly mess.

We learned to call her she, even though she was born a great uncle of mine.  Subtly, the real person we’d known she’d been all along, began to emerge, until we could no longer remember her any other way.  Over time she began to clutch a pocket book to her chest, or dangle it from her slender arm as she went about her business; filling a church pew with her narrow hips and tall, tall legs; buying okra to fry, beauty store talc, or policy numbers—all for the price of a dream.  Her mouth was neat when she spoke and ate, her words intelligent and authoritative, and this innate dignity—her straight back, legs crossed at the ankle—gave her, she, who eventually took the name Chantal, an undeniable authority we could scarcely argue.  And so, she was Chantal, and we never flinched or bothered much about it from then on.

While our other aunts plotted their seduction with honey baked hams, pound cake, and the embrace of warm arms as soft as velveteen, Chantal charmed with her ability to weave a tale, to transport us from the mundane with one clever narrative after another, none more unforgettable than the legend of Rebekah and Itcho.  Like a prairie dog with a secret stash of bluegrass, I was selfish about my time with aunt Chantal, and preferred to call when I knew I’d be her only visitor.

“To begin the story Otis,” she said to me, waking suddenly, perhaps a half hour after she’d abruptly fallen off, “you have to begin with Rebekah, the girl child, and the days of the first Seminole War.”  And here she’d lilt into the uncanny voice of the young girl.  Oh, I didn’t know it to be certain, but it sounded just as I’d come to imagine her, after hearing her story again and again all throughout my childhood and even now as a grown man—Aunt Chantal brought the voice, the spirit of the child alive.

“I was just a child one day, innocent and free, and the next, without warning or ceremony, it seemed I could smell nothing but the acrid, choking smoke of deathly fires, as I witnessed the inflamed limbs of royal palm and great pine, falling like slain beasts in the throes of a treacherous fight between heaven and earth, black and white, mortality and the incinerated dreams of the unwanted, as their screeching cries lived on in echo—reverberate, retreat, reverberate, retreat—ad infinitum.

Rebekah and her mama went to live amongst the Seminoles when Rebekah was four.  She could scarcely recall anything before that, such as her life on the big land in Alabama, where her mama worked inside the colonial mansion of Mr. Kelly, while her father labored in the fields.  Rebekah routinely failed just about every question when her mother Mary quizzed her about their old life; the names of her little friends, what they ate, or what the trees looked like back west.  Who knows, but maybe she wanted deliberately to forget.  What she couldn’t  recall was a time when she wasn’t running wild with Itcho and his sisters.  Scampering freely into his Chickee, the one closest to her and her mother’s, sitting at his mother’s feet while she wove and sang to her, or lay her down in the late afternoons when she grew sleepy, waiting for her mother to return from harvesting the fields.

“Rebekah was the daughter of Yahola, meaning wolf cry, the name the Seminoles gave him for the terrific, charging sound he made in battle.  It was the sound of a man putting his entire heart and soul into his slayings—and the heartbreak and regret that followed, because Yahola was not an innately violent man.  Yahola, or Joseph as he was known in Christendom, was a standout hero of the first war of 1816, but he never gained the fame of a John Horse and such because they say ole Yahola was a crazy man.  I suspect they didn’t understand his passion, and the fear, the terror and uninvited evil that spurred him onward.  The specter of hate is a ferocious thing to have at your back.”  Here she paused to light a cigarette.  Yes, Chantal was a tough woman given to extremes, such that she sometimes chewed and smoked her tobacco, both at the same time.  “Huh, I ought to know,” she said, shaking her head.

My ears pricked and my back straightened at any intimation of Chantal towards her own life and hardships.  I heard she’d run away in her early teens to New Orleans and had made a living as an attendant to a woman who’d attempted to reestablish the quadroon balls, and had done so successfully for a time.  Beyond this, I was never courageous enough to pry, so I sat back with a glass of lemonade—cold, frothy, and sweet, the greatest feat of Chantal’s culinary ability—and listened, sometimes with my eyes closed, as she went on, recounting the earthly days of the girl child Rebekah.

“I only knew I was a child, a little girl,” she resumed in uncanny imitation, “I never thought about my parents having been slaves, or that Itcho, the boy I loved and had loved from the first I’d known him at six years old, was an Indian.  These are some of the things, the evils of a certain kind of knowledge and what it can do, that were forced upon me while I was still innocent.”

Chantal warbled on in the voice of Rebekah, as if the resurrection of the little girl in memory was a thing solemn and divine, and I suspect for Chantal that perhaps it was; that like a great love or narcotic, she needed her—the legacy of the once thriving young girl, running wild over Florida wetlands, to help her live out what was left of her own days.  “I liked my little brown legs,” she went on, “because they were strong and limber, and I could tramp through the mangroves and climb the sturdy trees of willow and cypress when the rains stopped and the waters receded, exposing the bottom of creeks in large dry patches of red and purple earth, which I understood to be squares of magic carpet.

Mother gave me my own little yellow chick to raise, and I adored him.  I kept him in the first basket I ever managed to weave, poorly, and pestered Itcho’s grandmother until she gave me fistfuls of grain for him to eat.

At night I dreamt of saber tooth tiger cubs, and wanted more than anything to capture one of my own.  Itcho had once given me a small, hard porcelain object of yellow and white, which he claimed was the tooth of a saber his father had wrangled.  Mother said she wouldn’t tolerate him lying to me, so she threw my cherished talisman into the placid waters of Lake Okeechobee, giving rise to days of inconsolable weeping because of the great meaning I’d attached to the gift, and my grand pride in being its chosen recipient.

This was the life I lead, that of a carefree child, with a home and a community, and a rudimentary understanding of my place in the scheme of things—before the quiet of our lives was disrupted and made chaotic by the assault of white men and rifles.

 

II

The night I first met my father I awoke to the sound of a great thunder clap, which I later realized was the voice of my mother and the voice of my father, blazing like fire, only to commingle in a burst of combustible rage.  Startled awake I was instantly sober.  I crept to the edge of our open air dwelling and witnessed my mother embroiled in a heated fight with a man with hulking limbs and a dark skin that glistened under moonlight like molten sugar.  I wanted to run to mama’s side, to protest and defend her, but some innate directive told me to hang back and keep quiet.

‘Mary, you don’t know all I’ve done to keep you safe.’ The gigantic man spoke in pleading, sorrowful tones.  ‘I’ve run through forests with blood hounds on my trail, waded through crock infested waters, slept under cover of nothing in the rain, and caught and roasted small animals with my bare hands just to survive another day—all so that you and Becca would be alright.’  Much later I would remember the chilling nights, under cover of dark skies and scintillating starlight, when Mama and Papa had trailed a band of Creek Indians fleeing Alabama, ultimately settling in Florida during the Creek war.  Of seventeen negro children to embark on that journey, I was one of only three who survived.

Even before that night when I heard the clash of their voices, Papa had all along been in close proximity at another camp a few miles away, but hadn’t come to live with us because mother had abandoned him.  Like many slave women she was traumatized by what she’d seen and known, thus eschewing the company of men from that point on, seizing a freedom and autonomy more real than most women anywhere would ever know.

‘I wish you ain’t have bothered with it Joseph,’ Mama said.  ‘Me and Becca are safe here now, we’ve found a place among these people—they peaceful and kindly.  And they find value in my work—how I harvest my beans, plant my pumpkin, and tend to the mulberry trees belonging to the chief and his wife. Only time I get vexed at all is when they ask me to speak to these here white traders that pass through from time to time.  My English is better’n theirs and I done learned some words in Creek and Miccosukee too.’

‘Mary, you’ve got to listen now, and listen well!  You and Becca got to be watchful. You can’t walk around carefree without looking over your shoulder any more than you ever could on old man Kelly’s place.  It’s even more dangerous here, because back on the plantation you was already owned.  Jackson’s men will be trooping through here in no time, ready to chase these Indians off this here land, and kill us or drag us back to some homestead somewhere.  But killing is likely to be their prettiest option cause it will run a lot cheaper than hauling us back to Bama, Virginney, or some other place.’

I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but I sensed her despair.  ‘No, no!’ she shrieked. ‘I’m free now, and I ain’t never going back.  I don’t want to see the face of Ian Kelly or no man like him ever again!  They’ll drag me back dead!’  At the mere thought of encountering the slave master who was also her father, mother began to tremble and sob, and I wanted desperately to run to her side.  But I knew I had to remain invisible and silent because this talk between my parents did not involve me, so I stood alone against the darkness, weeping and shuddering as my identity—as understood by those much more powerful than me, began to reveal itself—and I was shocked and desperately disappointed to find that I was not at all who I’d thought I was, all along.

‘That’s why I’m warning you Mary.  You can’t give up.  You can’t relax or take it for granted that you’ll ever be free.  You’re a colored woman and the mother of a colored child.  The fate of constant captivity is your cross to bear.’

My mother fell to her knees and remained this way, sobbing into her open palms until my father scooped her up in his strong arms and began to carry her towards the cover of our modest home.  I scampered back to my pallet, laid myself down quick, and feigned a deep sleep.”

Chantal paused here to reach inside the pocket of her housecoat and retrieve her pouch of tobacco into which she dipped her long fingers, and gathered a fresh wad to tuck into her cheek, as if the stuff fueled and energized her.  “Listen careful now,” she said.  “Because the Watcher of the Silent Ones is coming.”

I asked Chantal if I could have a break, and I shuffled into her kitchen where I felt quite at home.  I stoked the stove with more coal so I could warm some left over cornbread and make a fresh pot of coffee. As a bachelor and railroad man, I’d spent many hours in solitude and knew of necessity how to care for myself.  I wanted to savor my buttered cornbread and sip my sweetened coffee, then set my plate down and settle in nice and cozy to listen to my aunt speak in the haunting voice of Rebekah with my eyes closed—because I knew the story well, and could foresee the tremulous, chilling things that would soon come to dominate the narrative—a gripping passion play comparable to the cold pangs brought on by Satan, seconds before the vice grip of death and reckoning take hold.

“What Yahola, what Joseph said, proved absolutely right,” Chantal went on now that I was satiated and warm inside like a bear cub sheltered against winter inside its mother’s den.  “In a matter of days a pair of British traders managed to spread the word about the coming attack, and like John the Baptist bringing news of the imminence of Jesus Christ, these tidings prepared everyone for the American soldiers who would soon follow close behind.  Joseph was one of those who bought arms from those traders to help defeat the encroaching onslaught of men who intended to reduce him to an animal, and redact his God given rights without mercy.

A group of men, Indians and African-Americans, sat in conference beneath the generous shade of a flaming mahogany.  “Quiet!”  Itcho’s father Hachi iterated in stern tones to silence a smattering of individuals who’d begun to speak over one another, each one vying to press their ideas on the group, “Joseph is speaking!” he bellowed.  Joseph had quickly become appreciated and sought out for his intelligence and skills of reason during strategizing sessions with Hachi and the other men—a group comprised of Creek, Oconee and Seminole, mixed with a smattering of fugitive blacks.  They hunkered down to map their plans, relying on sketches in sand to help overcome their lack of fluency in one another’s languages, only to discover that in war—particularly a cruel one such as this, in which the conflict exists for the sole purpose of exacting evil and taunting justice—there can be no plans, and that the only thing left to hope for is the grace of God, and the often limited benefits that come with being on the right side of reason.

The fated moment arrived, and the boots of the Georgia militia hit the ground outside our camp at nightfall.  The only thing keeping us from having already been killed was the fact that we heeded the directives of my father, and stayed away from the neighboring forts, where the majority of fugitive slaves had sought refuge and were now all dead.  Joseph’s ingenious plan to keep my mother and me and the rest of the blacks hidden in plain sight, is undoubtedly what saved us.

Mother and I had hunkered down against the warm bosom of mother earth, large fronds of pumpkin leaf shielding us from view.  We listened with trepidation as the footfalls of the militia men drew nearer, and trembled in terror as we heard the war cries of a cadre of men leading the charge of battle, while another troop of  warriors approached stealthily from the back, circling the militia men, slaying them one by one, until there was nothing left but tufts of smoke, fallen bodies, and the residual trauma and weariness that comes with killings of any kind, even murder enacted in self-defense.

In the aftermath of battle, my parents were able to reconcile to the extent of looking out for one another, but were never able to mend the breakages that conquer and divide in the face of the kind of dehumanizing events that brought them to the Florida wetlands in the first place.  So we lived on, constantly on the move with a small band of other blacks and Indians, a tense sort of friendship between them, as my father continued to lead the skirmishes, keeping soldiers and militia men at bay for a number of years to come.

But it was not until the last stand, when Joseph slew and skinned a wolf, and donned the wolf’s pelt, laying it against his back,  dancing ferociously in order to build his psyche against the encroaching interlopers—blood from the still warm animal trickling down the back of his legs, his face and chest, as he prepared to slay a pair of enemy soldiers—that all and sundry—the fugitive slaves, black freedmen, Seminoles, and whites, finally grasped with full appreciation the kind of madness borne of these wars, of our decidedly ‘new world’ brand of hate.

Here Chantal shuffled off to her bedroom, and I knew that for the first time she would take the story of Rebekah and Itcho to its high point in a way she’d never done in telling the tale before.  I leapt up from my chair and began pacing the floor—anxious, excited and fearful of the revelatory truths set to unfold.

Chantal, tall and slender, the elegant creases in her face belying the exhaustion of her years, returned from her little room, stacked with clothes and mementos, and tiny receptacles of recrimination and sin—and placed a worn leather suitcase down on the floor of her miniscule sitting room without ceremony or triumph.  “The Watchers of the Silent Ones are ever changing—passing in and out of the shapes of great blue heron, stoic owls or young rabbits at play.  They record history for the annals of humanity, written on the leaves of summer trees, on clouds whose imprints are more lasting than you’d think, on the insteps of beetles, and more importantly–onto the hearts of men.  Come closer now,” she beckoned,  “get low and lean in, so the spirits don’t dissipate.”

I gulped, swallowing so hard it hurt.  I wasn’t ready.  I hadn’t had enough time to right myself—and I knew there never would be enough time.  Not in all the eons lined up straight and marching towards infinity.   Chantal had never taken the story this far.  Here she used her long fingers to throw open the small suitcase, and there, tucked into the corners, were the shrunken, mummified bodies of the young girl Rebekah and her beloved playmate Itcho.  Their mutual affection, like their bodies and minds, suspended in time, not permitted to mature or naturally flourish.  Like all mummified creatures, the faces were distorted and strange, but it was the size of their small frames and the lingering aura of innocence about them that struck me, and I couldn’t stay the flow of tears that fell from my eyes as their remnants met my gaze.

“Yahola, that is Joseph, had fought valiantly and led his men on numerous triumphant raids, but eventually the two children were cornered alone, playing along the banks of the ‘Pahaiokee,’ The Lake of the Holy Spirit, and gunned down like animals, their bodies coveted like trophies.  Yahola was determined to get them back.   The retrieval of the body of his daughter and her young friend his last triumph.  Feverish rage at their killings is what prompted him to don the bloodied wolf skin, and dance about madly, his mouth foaming like a rabid animal’s before the white men who’d perpetrated this predictable, yet heinous act.”

I’d long heard rumors that I hadn’t believed, about the mummified bodies, kept in stealth and passed down along Chantal’s maternal side, preserved without the knowledge of any tribal authority, law, or museum.  And here I was making the discovery that she indeed had been their proud and faithful keeper.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Of a sudden, Chantal regarded me intensely, with the rheumatic eyes of a sickly cat.  It was almost a look of hatred.  The shutters on her modest apartment began to rattle, and the air inside her front room grew thick and cloying, and the thrill of the dramatic I’d been anticipating took a sinister turn, and by my inability to breathe normally, I could not be sure I’d retreat from her modest rooms alive.

“The Watchers of the Silent Ones wage their battles in stealth, unrelentingly,” she declared.  “What you’re experiencing is but a small sample of the pain, the discomfort and wrenching heartache of the damned and embattled—the victims of the lynch mob, the mothers who bear children despised from birth, hated for the assumption of their future blight upon us all.  The Watchers of the Silent Ones despise the learned who cling to every word of the false prophets of hatred.  With every depraved injustice, such as the killing of the children Rebekah and Itcho, the bodies of the egret, deer and panther, quake and tremble in untold pain.  The minnows, bluefish and bass feel their gills closing in as they struggle to move inside water.  The primrose willows and floating hearts are sorely chagrined and ashamed by the ways in which the cruelty and untruths of humanity wax on, even the molecules with their pained memories witness in disbelief the cowardice of the Silent Ones who fail to speak—who fail to challenge wrongdoing—these are in their eyes more culpable and bear more blame for worldly injustice, than those who know no better than to see their ignorant convictions through to the end.”

I tried to tap my foot or wriggle my fingers to make sure I’d be able to regain control of my body, but I could not move.  The velocity of an invisible force kept me pinned against my chair as I struggled to regain my breath.   When I could finally force a few words, I spoke in desperation.

“What’s happening to me aunt Chantal?  I don’t understand what’s happening or why you’ve done this to me.”

I was too depleted of strength to stand, or run or flee, so I fell to my knees and attempted to crawl towards the door.  At that moment, I realized I should not have spoken or moved, for I felt as though the very floor beneath me had shifted, and I was no longer girded by any foundation.  I had the terrifying sensation of falling over and over again, my stomach dropping, my knees like jelly—gusts of wind heaving towards me, giving me a frigid chill, as I experienced the terror of tumbling from a great height again and again and again.  Oh, the agony! The frightful drop of the bottom of my belly each time I swooned down at speed.  I trembled fearfully, terrified that next would come the fall preceding my final end.

Everything I’d expected—of the recounting of the story of the girl Rebekah, of Itcho, Yahola and Mary as I’d heard it told a dozen times before—was not to be, and I felt now as though I was paying some unforeseen ransom for thinking I could be a mere bystander, that I could hear this sad tale without suffering, as though it were only a mere legend or remnant of some long ago history that scarcely mattered anymore.

Chantal frightfully floated up from her chair—an unholy ghost.  Her head crowned with deer antlers, her back draped in Yahola’s bloodied wolf skin.  She shot up right before me, growing to a ferocious height—until she loomed enormous and imposing as a great cabbage palm.  We were no longer inside, but hovering then above black clouds, flocks of hideous grey vultures encircling our heads. The horrific falling sensation continued to hit me in waves, as again and again I felt all structure fall from beneath my feet, even as I remained motionless and captivated by Chantal’s sudden transformation.  Her eyes were sickly as ever, brimming thick with yellow puss, as though the bile of the hatred of days had been housed inside her, transfused into her body against her will, and visited upon her mercilessly—she seemed to be succumbing before my very eyes to the agony of every wrong and evil thing that brought us all, at our lowest hour, to the groveling level of beings with less nobility than flies.

“I was but a young girl, a burgeoning princess, walking a New Orleans alley way on important business,” Chantal trembled as she spoke, and the ground shook and the trees shed leaves like tears in solidarity. “Over my arm I proudly carried thousands of dollars in exquisite gowns, freshly collected from the renowned seamstress Marie, which my mistress Elodie had entrusted to my care.  I was to take those gowns to Elodie’s salon, where her charges were in the throes of preparation for the most important ball of the season—the one that would secure their placement with suitable gentlemen, and payment of Elodie’s fees for the coming year.  I knew the import of my errand, for Elodie had even promised me a debut ball of my own at sixteen, if I consented to listen well and work hard.  Everyday life then, was nothing short of a dream.

I was so consumed with the careful transport of blue taffeta, emerald silk, and blushing satin, I scarcely noticed the two men following me from behind.  And in any case, I was so naïve and trusting I would have thought nothing of their presence had I noticed anyway.

As I came to the end of the alley at Dauphine street, these men suddenly accosted me in hateful words and brutal fists, jumping my body with the ferocity of wild animals.  “We seen you flitting around here boy. You think you pretty, don’t cha?  Well, let’s see just how pretty you really is.”  I was thrown down against the pavement like a paper cut-out harlot, the two men bearing down on me with the weight of their large bodies and strong arms, cursing, spitting and stomping me all over at the hour when day lays down in surrender to night.  Before that awful moment I’d been an innocent—unaware of the terrific degree of hatred too many human beings find themselves capable of summoning.

When it was over, and the men had run off, I sat still on the ground for some time after, so lost and broken inside my soul, as if every dream I’d ever had, had not even been my dream, but were the aura and fantasies of someone else entirely.  Minutes before the attack I’d been so proud of the responsibility I’d been charged with by my dear Elodie, and now, as I looked at those dresses, once  fine—now soiled, bloodied, and torn by the muddied boots of evil incarnate—I knew a despair and sadness no mortal eye should ever witness.  I was so ashamed to disappoint my mistress, and to have failed to succeed in the first important task she’d ever entrusted to me.”

It happened then—I fell.  My body went hurtling through space and time, and I felt myself free falling, crashing into flocks of black crows, their dark, sinister feathers sticking against my body.  My back hit tree limbs, my forehead became punctured by rocks and debris until my head was spotted all over by small wounds and droplets of blood.  With a great slam I fell back to my place on the couch in Chantal’s sitting room, by body wracked, aching and bloodied all over.

Chantal was hideous and terrifying in the wolf’s skin and deer antlers, her eyes still jaundiced and weeping puss, wolf blood streaming down the sides of her face.  Her voice issued in a low bass growl, as she weakened before my very eyes.

“You can’t just get by, dancing on the periphery Otis,” she whispered in the low moan of a viper.  “Whether you know it or not, whether it’s conscious or buried deep inside, you will feel pain, intense, excruciating pain, even if the next lynching happens to another, and you live all your days safe and contented as a piglet sucking lard.  You have to stand up against the savagery of others and call to mind Rebekah, her father the brave Yahola, her courageous mother Mary, and her best friend Itcho.  Remember how their blood soaked the ground and nourished the roots of the trees.  Take it now,” she shoved the suitcase containing the remains of Rebekah and Itcho towards me, and I knew then, that what I felt at that moment, mirrored exactly the fear she must have felt, as she sat sprawled, stunned and alone in that New Orleans alley way with a broken heart−inadequate to the weighty responsibility she’d been assigned.

 

Camille Collins was born in Gallup, New Mexico.  She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and been the recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission Fiction Prize in 2009.  She currently lives in New York City.