when he moved, like happy laundry bobbing on a clothesline.
During Choctaw gatherings, Mingo’s assigned duty was to keep the children safe. Though soft-hearted, he served his duty with a military bearing that appealed to the older children. Overlooking a few hundred lost teeth, a dozen broken arms and legs, two snakebites and fifty bee stings—he was moderately successful.
Knowing this night was likely to stretch into morning, Colonel Mingo supervised the building of a small campfire. He began by settling himself against the trunk of a two-hundred-year-old oak. My talking tree, he called it.
He then appointed seven of the older children—never the same children, but always seven—to be his officers. Colonel Mingo not only built the fire following this chain of command, he conducted the entire evening’s affairs through these seven officers.
“Let’s begin by getting us some wood. Will, Mary, Ken, Arch, you folks get enough kindling and small branches to get it started. Nita, Boyd, Samuel, you folks start gathering logs, ’bout two, three-foot long logs.”
“Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the officers yelled, scattering into the woods. Colonel Mingo pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the bowl and pressing the tobacco down lightly with his thumb. Cupping his hand over the bowl, he struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit his pipe. Soft puffs of sweet, aromatic tobacco smoke filled the clearing. His officers soon returned with the wood.
“Small wood over there, logs over here,” he said, waving his right hand in one direction and pointing in the other. “Keep the center clear for now. Good job, officers. Keep it up. Gonna need a lot more wood than that. Let’s get going, everybody but Samuel and Will.”
“Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the remaining five yelled on their way to the woods.
“Will, scratch out a circle on the ground with your boot heel, right there in the center of the clearing. Make it ’bout big around as a washtub.”
“Yessir!” said Will.
“Samuel, find us some stones. You and Will are gonna build us a fire circle, one we can use every time we come to this clearing. So build it good.”
“Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” they said in unison.
“If you want to pick you out some helpers, some of these other children might be big enough to help out. But you got to keep a watch out for ’em. Make sure they don’t step on a snake or get covered all over with ants.”
Soon most of the children were involved, gathering stones or firewood.
“Girls,” Colonel Mingo said, “you’ll find buckets on the wall of the chicken coop. Fill ’em up with red clay from the creek bed. That clay will be the mortar for our stone fire circle.”
“Yessir,” sang the young ladies, dashing to the chicken coop.
In less than an hour, the fire circle was built and enough wood for a week of winters was stacked at the edge of the clearing. Soon everyone found their own listening spot, where they would spend the next several hours till they drifted off to sleep.
“Samuel,” Colonel Mingo said, “I want you to take this match and light the fire. Notice which way the wind is blowing. Put your back to it soes it don’t blow out the flame. Git your kindling just how you want it, and git real close to the fire ’fore you strike that match, ’cause you only got one.”
Samuel was tall like his father—Brother Willis—and thin like his mother. He almost never smiled. Samuel listened intently to Colonel Mingo, then nodded and furrowed his brow to let everyone know he realized the seriousness of the situation.
He picked up a handful of dried leaves and tossed them in the air, watching which way the wind carried them. Then he stacked dried kindling at the base of the logs. He struck a match and held it to the kindling. The sticks burst into flame, but Samuel stayed with the fire till a small log caught fire.
Seeing the firelight fill the clearing, a tiny three-year-old started clapping, but the seven officers shooshed her. Colonel Mingo turned his slow gaze to the children. He waited till the embers were popping lazy-like and the flames burned low—yellow and blue hypnotizing flickers.
Some children sat cross-legged, some leaned against a nearby hackberry stump. A few rolled fat logs close to the fire to use as pillows, folding their hands behind their heads. Everyone drew close, for Colonel Mingo always told his stories in a barely heard sleep-if-you-want-to voice.
And they drew close for another reason. Safety in numbers, for Colonel Mingo always began his stories with the same warning.
“Now you children know there’s no reason to be scaired ’bout anything I tell you. None of these creatures is still living. And if they are still living, they aren’t living in these woods. And if they are still living in these woods, they’re probably asleep by now anyway. But just in case they’re not asleep, we outta be reeeeel quiet, ’specially if you hear something in the woods, something maybe prowling around attracted by the fire. In fact, maybe we should put the fire out.”
“No!” screamed a dozen voices.
“Well, now,” Colonel Mingo said, “if anything was asleep in the woods, I ’spect it’s awake by now.”
Colonel Mingo paused to puff on his pipe. A pink glow rose from the pipe bowl and tiny clouds of smoke floated around his face. With every eye watching him, Colonel Mingo set his pipe against a stone, sipped his coffee, and waited for the night sounds to take over. They floated down from the trees, fluttering sounds of winged creatures taking flight and the soft whistling of pine trees tilting with the wind. The distant croaking of frogs washed up from the creek.
Colonel Mingo lifted his eyebrows. His eyes grew wide and he turned his head slowly, ever so slowly, as if he’d heard something but didn’t want it to know he was there.
“I’m scared,” came a wee voice from behind the hackberry stump.
“Well, I was just trying to tell you children why there’s no reason to be afraid,” Colonel Mingo continued.
For half an hour, he entertained the young children with tales of friendly alligators and silly rabbits. He told them of tiny men called Bohpoli, who teach the herbal cures. Twice he paused and sent Samuel to the house, once for a refill on his coffee and again to borrow a bowl of pipe tobacco from your daddy, the reverend.
When the younger children were mostly asleep, he leaned close to the fire. “You know it’s wrong, real wrong, to hit somebody,” he whispered. “You all know better than to do that. I’m gonna tell you ’bout a girl that knew better but did it anyway.”
Jezebel Jezzy
“Don’t ever go to striking another person, not with a stick, not with your hand, not with nothing,” he said. “There was once an old Negro man who was married to an old Indian woman,” he began. “They children was grown and done left home. Then one day the old woman told her husband she was gonna have another child. ‘I been thinking we wuz too old for that,’ her husband told her.
“Well, the old woman was thinking the same thing, but sure ’nuff, in the usual time come a baby girl born to this sweet old man and woman. The girl was very beautiful. She had the shiny black hair of her father, but it hung in long curls, like her mother’s. Her skin was a little bit of both, dark brown and red. She grew to be long-legged
