“What was odd about it?” I asked.
“Heard tell from Jukes—he’s called that ’cause he plays the blues in juke joints sometimes. He’s a cousin and the night janitor over to the police station, high school, and newspaper. He picks up bits and pieces of a story from all them places. White people don’t notice a colored much. Jukes said that little girl got burned up, cops found wire around her wrists and ankles.”
“Wire?”
“Someone tied her to the bed, boy.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, I ain’t sure. Jukes overheard that when he’s cleanin’. If’n there was somethin’ to it, no one ever did nothin’ about it, said anything about it, ’cause that come down on the Stilwinds, and ain’t nobody wantin’ to come down on rich folk.”
“They think a Stilwind tied her to the bed, set the house on fire with her in it?”
“With everyone in it. Only all the others got out. ’Cept that little girl. She burned up ’cause the fire started in her room and she couldn’t get out. Those are the facts accordin’ to Jukes. I don’t know he heard right or told it right. But, they say you could hear her screamin’ while the house burned down. Sounded like an old wounded panther. Her mama tried to go in there after her. Flames was too high. Folks held her back, or she’d have run right through that fire and been burned up herself.”
“If the police thought one of the Stilwinds did it, why didn’t they arrest them?”
“Don’t get ahead of the facts. Just maybe one of the Stilwinds could have done it. Had they arrested a Stilwind, police force would have changed overnight. Back then Stilwinds was even more powerful than they are now, ’cause town wasn’t so big and they was all the big money that was in it.”
“How come the Stilwinds didn’t stay on the hill after they moved up there? Why did they move away?”
“Place supposed to be haunted by the ghost of that little girl burned up. Say she followed them up there to that house. Didn’t rebuild here ’cause they didn’t want bad memories, so they built up there on the hill. What I think, is memories followed them up that hill, not ghosts. They didn’t get far enough away. Maybe they can’t get nowhere far enough. What ghost mostly is, son, is memories.”
“Which Stilwind do you think set the fire?”
Buster laughed. “Boy, you is somethin’. I done told you no one got any proof any of them set a fire . . . ’Course, guess it don’t hurt to play with ideas. You got to consider all the angles of a thing. Lots thought it was James, because he was younger and might have been playin’ with fire. But, hell, he was a teenage fella, so he wasn’t playin’ if he done it. And if it was him, why did he tie his sister up? Was he just mean? Jealous? Had a grudge against her? Who knows? Families is like windows with curtains. Some folks keep the curtains pulled back. Most open and close them from time to time, and some don’t ever pull them back and you don’t never get no look inside. So, ain’t none of us outsiders really know what goes on in a family.
“Let’s see. There was an older sister, but she moved off before all this happened. Ain’t nobody thinks the mother did it, ’cause she was so overcome with it all. Story was, when they moved up on the hill, she seen her daughter at night at the foot of her bed, burnin’, holdin’ out her arms for help. It was more than the old lady could take. She lost her mind to save herself.
“Then there’s the father. The old man, though he ain’t old as me. He moved out of the house when his wife went nuts, started livin’ in the hotel downtown. The Griffith Hotel.”
“Does the father still live in the hotel?”
“Reckon he does. You real snoopy ’bout these people, ain’t you?”
“Did you know about a girl named Margret?”
“Margret? Who you talkin’ about, boy?”
I told him about the box, the letters, the ghost, the whole cloth of it. Once I started, I couldn’t shut up. You’d have thought I was drunk too.
“I remember ’bout that girl. I just didn’t remember the name. Them two things happenin’ in one night was big news. Fire and murder. Margret, well, she the daughter of a woman liked to take in men, you know what I mean?”
Being a recent sophisticate, I did know what he meant.
“Yes, sir.”
“I know that little girl’s mama in more ways than one. Me and her did business. She’s still living in the same house. She popular with the colored crowd, her being lighter. Mostly white and Mexican, I think. It’s a sad thing, boy, when a dark man got to feel better by bein’ with a light woman. Some kind of misery in all that somewhere.”
“Was that why you were with her?”
“You too young to talk about that. But I will say I ain’t seen her in years. And as to why I was with her, it was because she was cheap. That’s the God’s awful truth. I always did prefer me a woman black as midnight. But more than that, I like a good deal. Always get the best deal you can on somethin’. Don’t just jump at the first offer on any business come along . . . Winnie Wood, that was her name. It just come back to me.”
“Then her daughter was Margret Wood?”
“I think she used the Wood name. You a regular little investigator, ain’t you, boy? That’s good. You might be a policeman, you grow up.”
“Never thought about it.”
“You investigatin’ on this, ain’t you?”
“I’m curious.”
“That’s what it takes to be a law. And the good part is when a problem all comes together, click, click, click, like a tumbler in a safe . . . I used to be a law.”
“Really? A Texas Ranger?”
“Not any colored Rangers, son. But I was law.
“My granddaddy was known as Deadwood Dick, like a number of men was. He claimed to be the real one, or so my daddy told me. Said he was the Deadwood Dick that was written about in the dime novels. You don’t know what a dime novel is, do you? They was a kind of book or magazine. Adventure stories about Western folks. Daddy was a tracker for the U.S. Army. He helped track Geronimo down. My father was part Indian himself, Seminole. But he wasn’t like me. He was black as old coaly and rode a big white horse with a black mane and tail. I remember that about him. He had him a white sombrero turned up in front and wore chaps and fine Mexican boots with spurs. He had a way about him. They said he’d been with not only colored and Indian women, but Mexican and whites. He was deadly and good with a gun. He took up with a young woman half Seminole and part African and Cajun, and she was my mother. So I got lots of Indian in me, well as colored and Cajun. I grew up under the trackin’ business, ended up living with my mother in Indian Territory—Oklahoma. My father went off on a track oncet and no one ever heard of him again. Figure Indians got him. My mother used to say Indians got him, all right. A squaw.
“I became a Seminole Lighthorse when I was sixteen. Later, I added Lighthorse to my name. Lighthorse is a Seminole lawman in the small nation that was part of the Five Civilized Tribes. You heard of that, ain’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Indians. Creeks. Cherokees. Choctaws. Seminoles. Chickasaws. They all made up what the white people called the Five Civilized Tribes. They had their own laws and run the nations when it come to Indian matters. I liked the life, but it come to an end and I come to East Texas. Been here ever since. Ain’t nothin’ ever been as good as them days. Wasn’t nobody callin’ me nigger then. Least not to my face.”
“You say it.”
“What?”
“Nigger. You say it. So does Rosy Mae.”
“It’s kind of got to be a habit. But let me tell you so you’ll know, as my mama used to say. Coloreds don’t like that said by no white people. Understand? I don’t like it said by no colored if he says it mean-like.”
“Did the Lighthorse arrest people?”
“Arrested ’em. Executed them if’n they needed it.”
“Really?”
“That’s right. I knowed a fella named Bob Johnston. He was mostly Seminole. He had some white blood in him, but a drop of Indian made you Seminole. Lot of coloreds with a drop preferred to be Seminoles. They was treated better. Some coloreds just joined up with the Seminole and became members of the tribe. Didn’t have no
