When oil was discovered on Osage lands in the 1920s, unscrupulous white men, moved by greed, embarked on a vicious crusade to defraud the newly wealthy from their property and profits by every means possible, including murder. In her novel, Mean Spirit, Linda Hogan gives voice to this little-known chapter in American history as she tells the story of the Grayclouds and the Blankets, two families who find themselves suddenly caught in a whirlwind of death and destruction.
This passage recounts the Graycloud family’s journey into terror and uncertainty. And it tells of the terrible evil that would always be remembered as the hour of childhood’s end for Nola Blanket.
Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1947. Her book of poetry, Seeing through the Sun, won a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. Both a poet and novelist, Hogan currently teaches creative writing in the English department at the University of Colorado.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED THAT MORNING WAS THIS: AFTER DAWN, before Grace and Nola Blanket walked up to Belle’s white bed-stead, they passed the oil field. An oilman named John Hale nodded at them. Hale was a lanky white man who wore a gray Stetson hat. He’d been a rancher in Indian Territory for a number of years before he invested in the oil business. He was known as a friend to the Indians. He’d always been generous and helpful to his darker compatriots, but Grace didn’t care for him.
Once, feeling Hale’s eyes on her, Grace glanced back, quickly, over her shoulder. Hale watched her, but she was a beautiful woman and it wasn’t unusual for men to stop and stare, so she thought little about it.
On their way to Woody Pond that Sunday morning, the girls walked a little behind Grace. They whispered to each other the secret things girls share. Nola bent and picked a sunflower. She handed it to Rena. Rena pulled the yellow petals from the flower, looked at its black center, and said, “He loves me.”
“Who?” asked Nola.
“How should I know? But it’s grand to be loved, isn’t it?” Rena smiled.
Grace walked faster. “Hurry! We’ll be late for church!” The sun moved up in the sky. They had another mile to go. But the girls didn’t keep up with her and they lagged farther behind and there were more distances between Grace and the girls than just that stretch of road; there was a gap in time between one Indian way of life and another where girls were sassy and wore satin ribbons in their hair.
They turned and walked up the red dirt path to the pond. Grace gave each of the girls a small knife. “Cut those thin ones.” She pointed to the willows she wanted for her baskets, and in their chalk-white dresses, the girls bent and pared them off, then handed the cuttings to Grace. She put them, one at a time, neatly in the sling she carried looped up over the padded shoulder of her dress.
It was hot and the white sun had risen further up the sky when Grace heard a car. It wasn’t unusual for whiskey peddlers to drive past Woody Pond on Sunday mornings, nor was it odd for drivers on their way home from the city to stop there and rest.
The car kicked up a cloud of dust. When it cleared, Grace saw the black Buick. She smiled at first, thinking it belonged to Moses Graycloud, and that he was picking them up because they were late for church, but then her hand froze in the air.
The men in the car turned their faces toward her, as if something was wrong.
They talked while they watched her. She thought she saw a pistol, then thought she must have imagined it. The driver seemed to be saying “No” to the other man, and they drove in closer, still arguing. Hale was driving. Grace didn’t know the passenger. He was a broad man with dark hair. She looked at them, then moved behind a tree. They turned the car around and drove slowly away down the road, but Grace remained nervous and watchful. “Hurry, it’s getting late,” she urged the girls. She glanced back toward the car. The girls worked faster. The sun was hot and the bees sounded dizzy, and then the car returned, and again the men’s eyes were on Grace.
When the car braked, Grace panicked and held still, like a deer in danger, rooted to where she stood. Even the air became still, and not a hair on Grace’s head moved as she stood still and fixed, a hand poised on the branches in the sling at her side. In desperate hope, she looked around for other Indians who might have been at the pond searching for turtles, or a Sunday morning rabbit hunter. But they were alone, and the girls felt Grace’s fear, like electricity, rising up their skin, up the backs of their necks.
Nola looked around. “What is it?” she started to ask, but without turning toward her, Grace hissed at her, hoarse with a fear so thick that Nola dropped down to the ground. She hardly breathed. Grace scanned the oaks and hilly land. “Don’t move!” she told the girls. “Whatever you do, don’t follow me.”
The car went by and turned around another time, with the men still looking, and in a split second before it returned, Grace whispered dryly, “Stay down. Stay there.” Then she dropped her sling on the ground and ran, crashing through the bushes, away from the pond, toward town.
The girls fought their impulse to run. Even their own breathing sounded dangerous to them.
Grace was an easy target, and she knew it, but she wanted to, had to, lure the car away from the girls. She hoped and prayed she could turn and cut through rocky land a car couldn’t cover, but the Buick followed her down the road, and when she ran faster, the car speeded up. Then she saw the rocky land and with relief, she veered off and cut through a field, and even from where they hid, the girls could hear the car turn and follow, grinding across the summer grass. The driver struggled with the dark steering wheel over stones and clumps of earth. In spite of her fear, Nola rose up to look, stood just enough to see her mother kick the shoes off her feet and race into the forest. As Nola watched, Grace disappeared in the dark green shadows of leaves and branches.
Rena was crying. She pulled Nola close to earth, tugging at her skirt. “Stay down.”
The car braked, and Nola peered over the brush to see a man jump out. The driver remained inside, though, and the motor idled. Then in day’s full light, a gunshot broke through air. Like a stone cracking apart, something falling away from the world.
The girls lay flat in the shallow water, hidden in the silty pond between the reeds. Nola covered her eyes with one of her muddy hands, but it was too late, she had already seen her mother run barefoot across the field, followed by the black car, and in her mind’s eye she saw her mother wounded.
The car doors slammed shut. The girls heard the car begin to grind and jam once more across the field. They pressed themselves deeper into the marshy pond, still and afraid. Only their heads were out of the muddy red water. They barely breathed. Nola dropped her knife and searched the silt frantically, with shaking fingers, until she found it and held it tight and ready in her fist. Then the wind began to blow, hot and restless, drowning out the sound of the car. The men had propped Grace’s body between them as if she were just a girlfriend out for a Sunday drive. They drove up to the pond where water willows were quaking in the wind, and when they lifted the woman out of the car, both of her dark braids came loose and fell toward earth. The wind blew harder. The men placed Grace’s body behind a clump of wind-whipped black bushes, then they straightened their backs, turned around, and searched for Nola.
Nola could barely hear them speak over the sound of wind.
“I thought you said the girl was with her.”
“She was.”
Nola held her breath. She heard nothing else, for a sudden gust of wind whistled across the water and rattled the cattails. The girls were afraid to look. They heard the men search among the rushes, close to where they remained paralyzed with fright, but by then, the girls could not tell the difference between wind and the men’s hands pilfering through the reeds.
The turn wind, a current from the south, blew grit up from the ground. The hillsides stirred with dust devils. Branches broke off the older trees.
As the hot wind quickened, tree branches began to creak. The storm drowned out the sound of the car and when the men drove away, the girls did not hear them. A mallard moved across the pond and took cover, hiding as the girls hid, in the blowing reeds.
A short while later, the car returned. Its motor sounded like the wind. The girls were sure the men were searching for children in Sunday dresses. One man got out and walked through the wind-swept grass toward Grace Blanket’s body. From between the reeds, Nola could almost see his face. The wind blew his jacket open and away from his shirt. Behind him the trees bent. He placed a pistol in the dead woman’s hand. Nola caught another glimpse of him. She couldn’t tell who he was. She had never seen him before. He opened a bottle of whiskey and poured it on Grace Blanket’s body, and the wind blew the smell of whiskey across the pond. The girls held their breaths while the man buttoned his dark jacket and laid down the empty bottle. He got back in the car and it rattled off toward town, erased by a storm cloud of dust.
The girls were drowning in the heat and wind of the storm. They didn’t hear the sound of Michael Horse’s gilt-colored car, nor did they hear Belle call out their names. They heard only the howling wind, and when it finally died down, they heard the horrible flies already at work on the body of Grace and then the afternoon sun turned red in the west sky, and then the long day was passing and the frogs began their night songs, and then it was night and the stars showed up on the surface of the dark pond. Nola crawled out of the water and up the bank of the pond on her elbows and knees. She half crawled toward her mother’s body. Rena followed, shivering even in the heat. Her thin-skinned hands and feet were cracked open from the water. And in the midst of everything, the moon was shining on the water. Grace was surrounded by black leaves in the moonlight, and the whiskey smell was still thick and sickening. Grace was twisted and grotesque and her head turned to the side as if she’d said “No” to death. In her hand was the gun. The girl stood there for what seemed like a long time. She laid her head against her mother, crying, “Mama,” and wept with her face buried in the whiskey-drenched clothing.
“Come on,” Rena pulled Nola back into the world of the living.
Nola started to take the pistol. “Leave it,” Rena told her, so Nola reached down and unclasped the strand of pearls from her mother’s neck. With Rena’s arm around her, she walked away, then looked back, hoping against all hope that her mother would move, that her voice would call out the way it had always done, “Come here, little one,” but there were only the sounds of frogs and insects.
Rena took Nola’s hand. They walked toward the Grayclouds’ house, hiding themselves behind bushes or trees. The muddy weight of their dresses dragged heavily against their legs.
That night, the lights of fireflies and the songs of locusts were peaceful, as if nothing on earth had changed. How strange that life was as it had been on other summer nights, with a moon rising behind the crisscross lines of oil derricks and the white stars blinking in a clear black sky.
At the dark turnoff to the Graycloud’s house, sweet white flowers bloomed on the lilac bush. The mailbox, with its flag up, was half hidden by the leafy branches. The house, too, looked as it always did, with an uneven porch and square windows of light. The chickens had gone to roost for the night, and they were softly clucking, and out in the distance, the white-faced cattle were still grazing, looking disembodied.
When they passed through the gate and neared the front door, the girls saw something white at the azalea bush. They were startled. They stopped and stared, thinking at first it was a ghost. But then the ghost in its white apron stepped toward them and said, “Where’s your mother, child?” and the ghost became solid and became Belle Graycloud. Between sobs that night, Rena tried to tell the story of what had happened, and before the loss of Grace turned to grief in the old woman, Belle raised her face to the starry sky and thanked the Great Something that the girls were alive.
Neither Belle nor Lettie Graycloud could sleep that night. They were still awake when Moses returned home from the livestock auction in Walnut Springs. He was wearing a new straw hat. Belle heard him whistling as he led a new palomino pony—they were the fashion that year—through the dark lot and into the barn.
She opened the door and called his name.
“I’m coming,” he said from the darkness, then she saw him in the light from the house. He walked through the door and set his hat on the table. “What is it?”
She told him about Grace.
Moses was stunned with the news. He sat down heavily in a chair, and slumped over the table. He covered his face with his hands and was silent a long while, then he asked, “Did they see who did it?”
Belle shook her head. “All they know is that they drove a car like ours.” She sat beside him. Her eyes were swollen.
He said, “Belle, I’m so sorry.” He had doubted her. Then he said, “Black Buicks are everywhere.” He took a deep breath, stood up, and put the new hat back on his head.
Belle was alarmed. “What are you doing?”
He answered slowly. “I’d better go talk to the sheriff.”
She put up her hand to stop him. “I don’t think you should.”
He was puzzled. “Why not?”
She hesitated. She was weary and hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. “Because, Moses, the killers didn’t see the girls. I’m afraid that if they knew there were witnesses, they might come looking for them.”
He turned it over in his mind, then took his hat off and, without an argument, he sat back down and rubbed the grit off his face.
Belle put her hand over his. She fingered one of the scars that crossed his knuckles. They sat that way, in silence for a while, Moses deep in thought, Belle too shaken to say more.
Then Moses pulled at one of his dark braids and said, “It was probably a lover’s fight.”
Belle studied his face. Moses was trying to push away his fear. It made her twice as cautious, as if to make up for him. “And if it wasn’t?” she said, but before he could answer, she was on her feet. She took a pistol from a cabinet. It was a small handgun, one she used to frighten coyotes away from her nervous chickens. She loaded it. Moses said nothing.
Upstairs, the girls slept in Lettie’s bed. It was hot. In the dim light of the lamp, they looked vulnerable in the large bed. Lettie watched over them. She also held a pistol. She straightened the sheet tenderly over them and smoothed the hair back from their damp faces. She wanted to hold them, to offer solace, but their breathing was deep and the waking world was dangerous, so she left them to the gift of sleep.
After a while, Belle relieved her of her watch, and the old woman set up her own silent vigil over the girls. But Lettie was overwhelmed with a feeling of loneliness, and around two in the morning, she returned to the bedside of the girls. She looked haggard. She wore a dark, worn robe. “Go on now, Mama,” she said. “You need rest.”
But Belle made no attempt to leave the room. “I can’t sleep anyway,” she said. Lettie was insistent, though, until Belle pulled herself up from the chair and went down the hall to her own room. She was restless, gripped in a hot fear, afraid for Rena and Nola.
She sat at the mirror. Out of habit, she brushed her long silver hair while she thought. In the dark, sparks flew and snapped through the air around her. She was sure something was afoot. She put the brush down.
Moses seemed to sleep. Through hell and high water, Belle thought, he always slept, and she was angry at him, but then she noticed that his breathing was uneven. He turned over.
Belle rocked herself in the rocker and gazed out the window. The floor creaked. She was watchful as she looked into the dark. She wanted to read the deep night and decipher the story of what had happened to Grace Blanket. She believed it was a plot since Grace’s land was worth so much in oil. All along the smell of the blue-black oil that seeped out of the earth had smelled like death to her.
Belle climbed into bed beside Moses and tried to sleep. The old wood house settled and creaked. It was too hot. The sheets felt stiff against her skin. She climbed out of bed once more, and crept down the staircase. The furniture downstairs was dark and heavy, with ominous silence living in the shadows. Belle checked the latches on the doors.
Moses pulled on his pants and followed her downstairs. In the kitchen, he poured water into a glass and carried it over to Belle. “I’ll stay up,” he said. “You go rest.”
She smiled at him. His wide chest looked soft beneath his undershirt. She laid her head against his chest briefly, long enough to hear his heart, and then she went back up the stairs.
Moses sat at the kitchen table in the darkness. He was waiting for his daughter, Louise, and her white husband, Floyd, to return home. By now, he thought, they were drunk and driving in from the city. The thought made him angry. He put his elbows on the oilcloth.
Once, before dawn, when the house made a noise, Belle climbed out of bed and in her big dressing gown, she looked out the window. In the gray light, she could have sworn a man was standing at the edge of the berry grove. “Moses!” she called down to him, but by the time Moses reached the window, the man was gone. She went down the stairs and peered out the window. He followed. She tried to convince him. “Someone was there. I saw him.”
In the bedroom, Lettie Graycloud sat beside the sleeping girls. She held the pistol on her lap. She was uncomfortable with the weapon, but the murder, even if it had been a crime of passion like her father thought, had struck too close to home. A cool breeze from the window blew in across her face and hair.
In the first red light of morning, both girls breathed softly. Exhaustion had overcome even Nola’s grief. But her face, almost overnight, had begun to look somehow hollow and older. Her skin was tight across her bones. Gazing at her, Lettie felt the first pain of her own loss, the first ache of missing her friend, Grace Blanket.
Lettie studied Nola’s dark skin, the widow’s peak, the distant quality that had once prompted Lettie to remark to Grace that if anyone’s prayers were going to be heard in this life, she knew Grace’s would.
Lettie’s mind went back to the time when Grace had first traveled down from the bluffs above Watona and moved into the Graycloud house. Grace and Lettie became fast friends. They’d lived together in this same room, slept in this bed as their bones grew longer. They’d whispered together at night, and now here was this girl, the same bone, blood, and skin as Grace. Lettie felt overwhelmed with love for the girl, whose dark, slender hand hung peacefully over the side of the bed.
But then, as the room lightened more, what Lettie saw frightened her. At first, she thought Nola was awake and staring at her, like a person half dead, gazing into her own watching eyes. But Nola’s eyes stared through Lettie and beyond, looking through the ceiling and roof to some far distant point in the sky. While some part of her was awake, was looking perhaps at the other world, the one where her mother had gone, the rest of her slept. She breathed deeply and evenly, and she did not so much as blink her open eyes.
Lettie looked away. She felt clammy. She went to the window. Another day of heat was blowing in. Already the ground was dry, and dust filtered into the room. Lettie leaned over, to feel the thin breeze of air. That was when she saw him. The man stood in front of the house. Without changing her position, Lettie raised the pistol to the window and aimed, but even as she did, she noticed that his legs looked rooted to earth, and he stood like one of the Hill Indians, as if he’d never lived among white people or their dry goods, or the cursed blessing of oil. His face was smooth and calm. Instantly, Lettie knew he was from the same band as Grace Blanket. She lowered the gun back down to her side and buried it in a fold of her robe as if she were afraid it would fire against her will. She knew, somehow, that he was there for Nola, to help her.
The man raised his eyes. Lettie wanted to step back, out of the light, but instead she remained in full view of the watcher, and for a brief moment their eyes met. He was one of the sacred runners from the hills. Lettie felt calm in his gaze, but as she looked out the window he seemed to vanish from her view.
Behind her, Rena began to stir. She opened her golden eyes and looked at her aunt’s red and blue scarves that hung like flames on the wall above her. At first Rena thought they were burning, they were on fire, and she gasped awake, full of fear, and fought her way out of the tangle of hot sheets.
Outside, the rooster crowed and the little dog, Pippin, ran toward the road, barking at Louise and Floyd. The couple walked past the watcher without seeing him. Lettie heard their footsteps on the gravel, then the opening door and voices downstairs, and then the sound of high heels clapping up the stairs.
The door sprang open. Louise rushed into the bedroom. Rena smelled the whiskey on her mother’s breath. She pulled away, remembering Grace’s body and the odor of whiskey that had drifted across the pond, but Louise held tight to the girl, asking over and over, “What happened?” and saying “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. My God.” Her shrill voice woke Nola. The girl turned over in the bed, then sat up like a ghost. She was damp with the heat and with shock. Her eyes were black and haunted-looking, with dark circles beneath them. Looking at the ash-pale girl, Lettie felt a chill wash over her skin. Even Louise went silent. The air seemed to go out of the room.
After Louise took Rena back downstairs, Lettie could think of nothing to do, so she dressed Nola in one of her own dresses. “Raise your arms,” she told her.
Nola did as she was told, and lifted both arms above her head. Lettie pulled the blue, too-large dress down over Nola’s head. “Turn around now, honey,” she said. Nola flatly obeyed. She stood vacantly as Lettie pinned the back of the dress to fit her limp and silent body.
Then, out of daily habit, while Nola stood in the poor-fitting woman’s dress, Lettie took a dark blue hat off one of the hooks on the wall and settled it on top of her own thick black hair. She always wore a hat, it was her custom. She pushed the hat pin through her hair, and while she looked in the mirror she saw Nola’s expression change. A look of surprise passed over Nola’s face as she caught sight of the watcher outside. She ran over to the window and looked out, her face pitiful and broken. The watcher looked up. Lettie felt the whole room fill with sorrow, but she took the girl’s cold hand and led her from the curtained square of light, and said to Nola, “Stay away from the windows. It’s not safe.” But something tugged at the girl and she pulled out from Lettie’s grasp and went into the hall. Lettie followed behind her in through the door of Belle’s room. Nola pulled aside the curtain and looked out. Down on the ground, near the berry grove, was another one of the watchers.
There were four altogether. They had come in the night.