Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy Page B

who had embarked at Fort Brooke, and another who had just come aboard at Tampa Bay. They were so engrossed in their conversation they didn’t see him. He cleared his throat and gave a small cough and one of the military men finally turned. He stared at Cow Tom, and after a bit, his face betrayed a moment of recognition.
    “You were General Jesup’s man at Fort Brooke, yes?” he asked.
    “Yes, the general’s man,” Cow Tom repeated in English. “Linguister.”
    “You and the fiddler fellow.”
    “Harry Island. Yes.”
    “The fiddler was useful with that Seminole,” the military man said. “Poor bastard.”
    Cow Tom wasn’t sure what he meant.
    “What happened?” the new soldier asked.
    “Gripping guts. Didn’t last the day. Nothing for it but to put him over the side.”
    Neither he nor Harry followed up on the sick Seminole from the first leg of the trip, but he wasn’t surprised. He’d seen enough cases of bloody flux to fear the consequences, both for the sick and those around them. A sudden turn of dice could determine one man’s swift decline and watery grave, and another’s good fortune to view the rising of tomorrow’s sun. If Amy were here, she surely would have drawn a circle around both their heads to ward off such tragedy.
    “Come in,” the captain said.
    Cow Tom advanced into the small room. The setting sun sparkled off the blue water, and the whitecaps broke before the bow’s steady progress. From this vantage point, with the captain next to the big wooden wheel and armed white men in uniforms flanking him, it seemed as though these men had control of the sea and, by extension, the land. He could understand why such men felt powerful, with tools such as these at their command.
    “State your business,” said the Indian agent. He was a tall white man gone part native, with a coonskin cap and worn moccasins.
    “Blankets and corn,” Cow Tom said. “Negroes will settle if we give supplies straightaway.”
    He was no more sure this was true than his reassurances to the Seminole Negroes that they would be fine on board this vessel. He purposefully said “we” instead of “you” to hold himself apart, to be an element of solution instead of lumped in as problem.
    The Indian agent studied Cow Tom, assessing his worth, his age, probably calculating the risks of listening to his theories. Cow Tom must have passed the test, because the agent didn’t order him gone. “Supplies are scarce and must last. We have more stops.”
    Cow Tom had advantage in knowing how much was on the ship, and where stored. His muscles still ached with the transport of them. He thought of these men in the same way he did in dealings with the general, or Chief Yargee, the need to plant a seed now in the hopes that if it didn’t catch immediately, it might still bear fruit later. “Even a few blankets now, a show of good faith. And the promise of a quick meal. Corn, a little bacon for flavor. Maybe some of the women assigned to prepare.”
    He stayed quiet while they took his suggestion under advisement. The newly boarded military man, so fresh-faced he brought to mind a schoolboy, spoke up for immediate distribution. But the Indian agent worried about Creek hostility, some already arguing to withhold rations from the slaves of their enemies. At the end, the men in the wheelhouse decided on half measure. Cow Tom promised to round up four women to prepare the first onboard meal, and he followed the military man to a padlocked storage area. Pulling a key from his jacket pocket, the soldier opened the room.
    The storage area was packed from ceiling to floor, with foodstuffs and blankets, wooden crates and burlap sacks, and loose medical supplies in baskets—adhesives, sponges, Epsom salts, castor oil, a corkscrew, a spatula, a dental tooth key, even a pair of forceps. While the military man located a stack of wool blankets against the far wall, Cow Tom fixed on the contents of a poorly constructed crate on the