Someone else asked permission to speak: it was Bushy Hair.
“You’re shaming our family, my brother.” He told the truth. Nila was not at the meeting of only men, but the male members of the Wind clan sat in the gathering, and they were mortified.
Dylan Cornell left the next day, and Nila was happy to see him go. Yet within only one moon he returned. He professed that he missed his son dearly and that he wanted to take Micco on a trading trip across the Oconee. Nila didn’t want Micco to go. She’d had a dream that Dylan would try to take her son from her, but she knew if she tried to stop her husband, she would have to tell the people in the village what she had been enduring at his hands. She was frightened of revealing her shame, and she was frightened of losing her son. It was a prison made by the violent hands of her husband, but she had one option left to her. She asked her brother to accompany Dylan and Micco on the trading trip, and she was relieved that Dylan agreed. Not only that, he promised Bushy Hair much bounty.
It was dark in the early morning when the two men and the boy left. Only Dylan rode a horse with a saddle. The other two rode their horses bareback. There was much friendly talk from Dylan because Dylan did not know that his brother-in-law despised him. Though Bushy Hair had no idea that the white man had physically abused Nila over the years—he did not have the gift of dreaming, like his mother and sister—he was repulsed by the white man on general principle, for over the years Dylan had earned other marks of contempt.
The white man did not partake in the sacred green corn celebration.
No one in the village ever wanted to hunt with him, either, for Dylan could not use a bow and arrow, only his long gun. And he stomped through the forest like a full-grown bear, too, which scared away the game.
Further, while it was true that Dylan was expert in the language of the Creek people, he’d used his expertise to whine fluently about the killing of the cracker, yet hadn’t uttered one sentence of sympathy for the toddler who had been trampled.
Micco had no idea the enmity that his uncle held toward his father. He was happy to be in the company of his two favorite men and didn’t question why his usually sweet uncle only grunted in response to Dylan’s chatter. Yet halfway on the journey to the Oconee River, Micco was awakened by the sounds of struggle between his uncle and father. They were fiercely fighting, and unlike most men who bully women, his father was not backing down from the fight. He was heavier and taller than Bushy Hair and this gave him an advantage. The two men rolled on the ground in battle, and when Bushy Hair finally got the best of Micco’s father, the white man called out for help, using his child’s English name.
“Jonathan, Jonathan, help your father! Help me, my son!”
This was a choice no child should be forced to make. Micco didn’t know what to do as he watched the struggle. He didn’t want to choose, but he remembered how Bushy Hair had always made him feel good inside with his loving words. And he remembered how Dylan had hurt his mother, leaving bruises that she’d had to cover with long sleeves, even in the heat of summer. So the boy made a choice: He trotted to the site of the struggle and kneeled at the head of his father. The boy took out his knife, grabbed hold of his father’s chin, and slit his throat. Then Micco sat there on the ground and wailed, rocking back and forth with blood covering his hands.
His uncle let his nephew cry for a long time before touching the boy’s shoulder. Bushy Hair told him, gently, that they had to bury his father according to white men’s ways. They could not leave him for the wild animals. That would not be right. After the body was put into the grave hole, Bushy Hair told Micco that he had not wanted things to go this way, but Dylan had jumped him in his sleep. Micco looked at his uncle for a long time before asking, was this the truth? And Bushy Hair told him he would never lie to him. Yes, it was true, and he did not know why Dylan had attacked him.
Uncle and nephew spent a moon hunting and sleeping late. Bushy Hair told stories of the wily rabbit that constantly found himself in trouble with the wolf, but who always found a way to get loose, because the rabbit was a very smart creature who could not be caught. During that moon, there was a peace that Micco had never known, and he was happy, though he awoke sometimes with his face wet: his father now came to him in dreams.
When Micco and Bushy Hair returned to their village, it was Micco who decided to tell his mother that his father had died from eating tainted fowl, prepared by a white man at a trading destination. Micco said it was too difficult to bring his body back. He did not need to pretend sadness at the death of his father, for he did grieve. Yet his mourning ran alongside relief that his father never would hurt his mother again.