“It Matters” from Yellow Bird’s Song

Disappointment resonated through my monotone. “Nothing ever changes, Wacooli. The man’s words may be friendly enough, but what he’s charging for provisions makes my eye twitch.” Wacooli and I paced some distance away from Aeneas, who still was jawing with the post operator, a man named Jamison, bartering over the price of flour, ridiculous at a dollar and a half.

Situated on the Salmon Trout Riverbank, we reached Jamison’s Trading Post after our starved stretch across the desert. No one had been awake to see us arrive, and thankfully so. Traveling the last twenty miles, I watched Wacooli’s face turn from its accustomed brown to sand’s muted and dusty shade. All three of us appeared the same, stone-faced from fright, stiff in the saddle, emerging from some Greek and barren Hell, complete with mirages foreshadowing our demise. Whether from dirt or shock, my hair stood straight from my scalp like it was riddled with porcupine quills. Wacooli could have solved long division problems by scratching the numbers in the sweat-caked dirt on his arms. While removing his clothes, Aeneas’ pants stood up without his legs inside to keep them vertical.

Arriving so late, the only thing we could do was douse in the river and wash sand and smell downstream. Aeneas tipped his hat to Jamison and joined us as Wacooli took truth to words. “We’ll have to sell the mules, or we won’t have enough to purchase provisions to get us across the Sierra Nevada mountains, Aeneas.” Wacooli’s directness was hard-cracked mud, but his candor was one reason I invited him on this expedition. Wacooli’s name meant “where the young thing was found.” Peter found Wacooli outside of Ft. Mimms near Indian territory. He took the abandoned child into his arms and transformed his grief from losing Honey into love for the child found among the rushes. When I was eleven, the two arrived at Honey Creek, having made the last sorrowful leg of the trail together. Wacooli grew tall beside us, a herd of eight siblings, counting him among our ranks. Wacooli and Aeneas were both seventeen, stuck in the middle of the lot. He fit right in; none of us were white.

Aeneas shook his head, not giving me time to form a thought, let alone argue with him. “Rollin, sell your mule instead of mine. We sold my filly in Salt Lake. It’s your turn.” “I will, but I doubt my old mule will yield us over eight dollars. She’s swaybacked and bites more than she carries.” It was the truth. The only thing I’d regret by selling her was that my horse’s load would increase by her absence, slowing us all down. In Aeneas’ heart, he must have known we needed more money.

His protest was wasted, but he gave it, regardless. “I don’t wanna sell my jenny,” he whined. “I helped with her birth, with my arm up to my shoulder inside her mama.” That same arm smacked his hat on his pant leg, freeing hidden dust just to emphasize his point.

Wacooli put his hand on his hip, leaned on one leg, and looked between Aeneas’ pretty face and mine, both hard with care and weary tired. “Both of you should sell your mules. We’ve crossed the desert; there are mountains in front of us. We won’t survive long enough to make it to California if we don’t sell all we can afford to let go. Besides, I’m not cutting and hauling grass again for those beasts.” At that moment, I thought how Mama should have renamed Wacooli. Frank was more suited to his nature.

I squinted between the brim of my hat and my bushy beard, looking back at the nemesis of our debate. I offered the only consolation I could. “Jamison told me he’s a Mormon.”

Aeneas replied with exhausted demand, “What difference does that make? We’re half Cherokee. Wacooli’s black.” Angry and frustrated, Aeneas tromped a toddler’s tantrum over to the wagon and unhitched my nag and his beloved jenny. Both mules bawled in protest.

Wacooli and I followed him, and I put my hand on Aeneas’ shoulder in consolation. “Think, Aeneas. Jamison should give us a decent price for the mules, being a Christian man and all.” But Aeneas scowled. I inferred he wasn’t convinced. Nevertheless, Wacooli continued to try and persuade him after Aeneas handed me the reins. The Lord only knows what Aeneas would say of me after I was out of earshot. Despite Wacooli’s vocabulary, it still might not be large enough to encourage Aeneas’ forgiveness after forcing such a sacrifice.

Jamison’s misshapen hat sat on his head, a pointed end to his body’s vertical line, perpendicular against the vast, expansive, striped canyons paralleling the horizon. I said, “Excuse me, Mister Jamison? My brother said you might be looking for fair trade—our mules in exchange for provisions.”

“You and your brother Indian?” Jamison questioned. “I know you aren’t related to that slave.”

“We’re half Cherokee,” I countered. “The other gentleman with us is our brother and a free man.” His question surprised me and didn’t. He blew air from his nose, deciding he didn’t care enough to ask questions. Instead, he talked about only what his eyes could see.

“That bluff over yonder…” Jamison pointed a long finger to a jutting rock extending above and beyond the river underneath. “Called Susan’s bluff. Last year, a band of Indians killed Susan and her entire family. Scalped her brother, Mike. Gruesome. Indians stole the family’s livestock. She survived for a time, but then she threw herself off that rock there. Guess she thought she’d rather decide her fate than be raped and murdered by those Indians. So, folks named it after her.”

“That’s a shame,” I replied. Aeneas’ jenny bumped me from behind with her nose, causing me to lose my balance. “How old was she?” I asked, trying to be respectful of the dead.

“Bout your age, by the looks of you. How old are you? Twenty?” Jamison looked me up and down as if he would only offer six dollars for my ragged carcass.

Tired of his judgment, I pressed more present matters than the history of the landscape—or tracing my family’s genealogy. “Twenty-three. If it matters, my white half is askin’ if you’re willing to trade; my Cherokee half wishes no ill will to anyone.”

Then Jamison’s eyes fell on Kell’s bowie knife hanging at my side. After noticing his stare, I pulled my hands away from my body, implying I wouldn’t use the blade to gut him, no matter how much he charged for flour.

“Well, it matters,” was all he said. Then, his eyes lifted to my face, studying me to find my mother’s Irish skin. He must have seen her in my pale eyes because he took both sets of reins from my hand and walked down the slope in front of me, sliding on pebbles and stones and nearly losing his footing.

Once at the bottom, he looked both mules from nose to rump. Finally, he offered more than I predicted, a surprising eleven dollars for my mule and thirty-five for Aeneas’ jenny. He kept to himself what he thought to propose as compensation for the three ragged souls standing before him.

“We’ll take it,” I replied. At least Jameson offered more than I predicted for Aeneas’ mule, although he was still a stingy jackass.

The irony of it all was that he only offered more money, so we’d buy additional sacks of his flour.

We walked across the planked floor of the trading post counter in single-filed silence. Jamison wrote our credit in his ledger.

“What’s your name?” he asked without looking up while dipping the pen in ink. He poised his hand to write, but I hadn’t yet answered.

I thought to say, Cheesquatalawny, just to watch him squirm to spell it. Instead, I said, “Ridge. Rollin Ridge.”

He rested the pen’s point in the book and closed the leger to record his next dishonest transaction. Then, finally, he stretched out his hand to shake and seal the deal. Defiant, I didn’t offer mine. I saw it as in-kind reciprocation.

Insulted, Jamison remarked out of the side of his mouth. “Son, shake hands at the end of a deal. Didn’t your father teach you that?”

I figured since he’d printed our name in his book, being polite was no longer required. “He did. Don’t call me son. As you said, it matters.”

Found out from friendly travelers on the road to California, Jamison sold the stock he bought off starving travelers for ten times the purchased price. I wasn’t saying what those Indians did was justified—stealing livestock, murdering that family, or taking that girl, Susan. But I can’t fathom how what Jamison was doing was any more honest than Indian thievery.

Wacooli loaded up our supplies while Aeneas said goodbye to his jenny mule. I touched the broken seal of Papa’s letter when I tucked what little money remained into my saddlebags.

After Jamison’s arrogance and distrust, I tasted the same sourness Papa must have experienced arguing with arrogant white men. From an entry in 1829, Papa’s journal recanted Georgia’s new laws. No Cherokee could claim injustice against any white Georgian hell-bent on stealing our people’s gold. Likewise, no Cherokee couldn’t refute violent claims in a Georgia court, despite the crime happening on Cherokee’s legal ground. In the same vein, no Cherokee could claim any injustice against Ross, not without grave repercussions for daring to blemish his reputation. Papa and I traveled similar paths, twenty years apart, from opposing sides of North America.

Hell yes, it mattered. No matter how far west we traveled, white men were still swindling.