Deep Down (I) (10 page)

All three of them holding hands, they clambered down to the grassy edge of the pool where the crashing waters made waves before twisting into two separate streams, one that went in a series of smaller falls down the west side of Sunrise Peak and one that became Bear Creek.

“So,” Tyler said as she took out the picnic flask and poured cider for all three of them, then produced huge oatmeal cookies she’d put dried fruit in, “are there bears around Bear Falls and Bear Creek?”

“Used to be. Hunts drove them higher on the peaks,
least most of them. Black bears in Kentucky got so rare they put a stop to hunting for now, though if you get special permission, your hounds can run and tree them. It’s s’posed to scare them so they don’t come ’round humans, though that’s hardly fair. I mean, just like the Cherokees, it was their land first. You want to shoot a bear legally these days, you got to go to West Virginia or Tennessee. Why? You’d like to shoot one for your book?”

“I wouldn’t mind some pics of endangered wildlife, and some of deep forest ginseng, come to think of it. Yeah, that would all fit.”

“Is it a book about saving the environment—staying green?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, and she turned her head to look at him. “Well, spit it out,” she said, then silently cursed herself for not having said that better. But he knew by now she was no refined lady, and she figured that might be her appeal to him.

“Cassie, my book is about things being lost—a way of life passing away around here. It’s called Fading Appalachia.”

“So my way of life—my life—is history. Our ways are over and dead.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m trying to make you understand—”

“Tyler Finch, haven’t you heard that us li’l old hillbillies are a few cards short of a full deck?” she shrilled. She hadn’t meant to react so strongly, but he’d misled her. He was fixing to put her and Pearl in a book about a faded, colorless, dead-as-a-doornail—

“Cassie,” he said, reaching for her wrist when she stood abruptly and pulled Pearl to her feet, who squawked until Cassie gave her arm a little jerk. “I wanted you to know
and trust me before I explained all that,” he said, “so you wouldn’t take the title and my intent the wrong way.”

“Trust you? My mistake. Yes, I need the money, but I’m not selling out to a man who waltzes in here with the idea of putting me and Pearl on display in a book that says we’re all fading away around here!”

“Cassie, wait!” he protested as he scrambled to pick up his gear and follow her. “Let me just show you some of the photos, how achingly beautiful they are, how they speak for the beauty and the loss of a lovely way of life—”

“It’s not lost, but you can just get lost, far’s I’m concerned. I’ll drive you back to town and you can pay fading-away me for the day, but that’s it!” she threw back over her shoulder.

At least Pearl knew to keep her mouth shut. Maybe ’cause she could see her ma was crying.

10

J essie was surprised they didn’t see Cassie’s truck parked on the old logging road, but she could have parked somewhere else to hike up toward the base of Sunrise. She didn’t mention it to Drew; they were still getting caught up with each other’s news, though he had told her next to nothing about his talk with Vern, so she told him absolutely nothing about overhearing some of it. She did, however, give him her impressions of Beth Brazzo and Ryan Buford.

“I’ve never spoken with the man,” Drew said as they got their gear out of the Cherokee. Drew not only had his pistol on his belt but held a rifle diagonally across his upper torso. “Buford must have come in after I took Vern into my office,” he went on, “maybe to see Emmy and not me. I hear he comes and goes, but he hasn’t been around for a while. I’m sorry to hear he’s sniffing around Emmy.”

“You make him sound like a dog. Hope not, because she seemed pretty smitten.”

At that, they fell silent. Jessie wondered if Drew was thinking of them, instead of naive, young Emmy and an older man, who no doubt had at least one other woman on his string—his leash.

As they approached the fringe of forest, high above them, clots of clouds devoured the sun while the jagged peaks of Sunrise Mountain seemed to rip the bottoms right out of those clouds. Slightly off to the west, bald, bulbous Snow Knob, which they would use as a guide, glared down at them over the tops of the trees. Shadows lengthened; the sweep of wind stilled as if holding its breath. But Jessie had learned long ago that the forest itself was never really silent. As they plunged into its blue-green depths, leaves rattled, limbs creaked, twigs snapped. Their booted feet crunched along the leaf-littered path.

She jumped when Drew, walking behind her, spoke. “The site in your photo looks familiar, but I’m afraid it’s because so many places along Bear Creek look that way. Even with Snow Knob above, we might have to search a large area.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “But it’s a clear enough picture of the rocks in the water that we should be able to find the spot, then look in the general area for sang—maybe even in a cove. She always said coves were the best.”

“Coves along the creek or the lake up by the falls?”

“No, country boy. A forest cove. You know, deltas of rich soil near the foot of a mountain slope. Loam gets deposited there by streams coming down toward the hollows. Lots of hardwood trees with the overhead shady canopy that ginseng loves—I’m sounding like my mother.”

It helped to talk, she thought. Drew kept her inner darkness and fears a bit at bay. It was only because their mission was so desperate and solemn that she felt the trees had eyes. She tried to buck herself up, but for once the familiar forests seemed not friend but foe. Was her mother here somewhere? If so, Jessie had to face the fact she might not only be injured but—but gone.

“Yeah, I’ve seen spots like that, hidden, some untouched,” Drew was saying. “I remember one cove over on Big Blue where we used to hide out in an old drift mine shaft. You know, I never thought about the possibility that Mariah took refuge from the rain that night in an old pioneer mine shaft. Maybe she hurt her ankle and crawled in there for cover.”

“But if she didn’t have the strength to come back out, we might never find her.”

He had nothing to say to that as the path got steeper. Now and then the clouds parted and the smothered sun shot shafts of light through the ragged canopy of old trees. Finally, they emerged in the long clearing that followed Bear Creek down from the falls above.

“Deer tracks,” she told him. “I’ll bet a lot of animals come to drink here.”

“Even a coyote,” he said, pointing. “Unlike dogs, they walk in a straight line. But with the heavy rain that first night Mariah went missing, I don’t think we’ll find her tracks.”

They walked the south side of the creek, looking for the large rock Jessie’s father was standing on in the picture.

“You inherited your father’s curly hair,” Drew said.

“I wish I could remember more about him.”

“I wish I could forget more about my dad.”

Witch hazel bushes grew along the creek bottom, their tight buds almost ready to burst in their autumn show of gold and yellow blooms. Jessie worried that years of plant growth might make the spot they sought look completely different from the picture, but she didn’t say so. She didn’t want Drew to give up on this stab-in-the-dark idea.

“Look, early pawpaws,” she told him. “Mother and I love those.”

“I always thought they were too small and mushy to fool with.”

“You just never had someone fix them right for you, with cream, like custard. When we—when this is all over, I’ll show you.”

They could hear the distant thunder of Bear Falls. Jessie recalled what Seth Bearclaws had said about his Cherokee people being herded together like animals to be driven westward on the Trail of Tears. Then she saw the big rock.

“Drew—there!”

He nodded, looking out at it, then took the picture from her trembling hand to study it again. They shifted their position slightly, so the rocks were aligned just right. “It sure looks like it. There are enough flat rocks along here that someone could easily get out to it—walk on top of the water, so to speak.”

“Even if there was rain that first night, you said the hounds picked up her scent, then lost it. Maybe she walked along the creek for a while, then walked the rocks, and that’s where they lost the scent.”

“That could also mean she crossed the creek—that the sang site she sought was not necessarily on this side.”

“If it is in a cove, it probably would be on the other side. I hope the daylight and weather holds, so we can really look around.”

She put the picture in her backpack. Then, with Drew right behind her, their arms outstretched for balance, they went from rock to rock until they stood on the large one. “This is where he proposed to her, I’m pretty sure,” she told him as he craned his neck to look all around. “She told me once it was like their own little island.”

“So you think the spot they got the sang for money to get married is close to here?”

“I think we should look starting at the foot of the mountain where we might find a hardwood cove full of sang.”

Standing on her parents’ little island in a sudden slap of sun, their eyes met and held. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. Being with Drew gave her courage, but it was still what they hadn’t said that scared her.

Cassie couldn’t believe that Tyler had the nerve to return, after she’d told him to stay away. But here he came in that rental car of his, bouncing down the lane, driving right up and parking on the other side of the split rail fence where she was picking her early bittersweet crop she’d sell to craft stores. And what she hated most of all about his daring to come back, after just a couple of hours, was that she was glad to see him.

“Cassie, I know you’re still upset, but don’t run away,” he said as he got out of the car, hauling a camera with him. He didn’t even stop to close his car door.

“If you think I’m posing for more of your dead-way-of-life Appalachia pictures, you got another think coming!” she shouted.

“Just listen to me for a minute. I have to show you something in one of the photos.”

“You did show me the photos,” she told him, still madly snapping off the twigs of red-orange berries. “Real modern, how that digital camera can pop up all the pictures on its little screen. Why, it makes the old cameras we folks who are fading away use look like they—and we—are in the dark ages. How about a title like Dark Ages Appalachia?”

“Cassie, I’m sorry you took offense, but I’m serious
about this. Look, please,” he said and thrust the camera at her over the fence.

“It isn’t something about Mariah, is it?” she asked, finally looking up at him.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell what it is.”

His brow was crumpled into a deep frown. As mad as she was at him, she wanted to reach out and smooth it. She put her ragged bouquet of bittersweet on the ground. Her fingers were dirty, but she wiped them on her jeans.

“All right, let me see it.”

“I thought you might know what it is,” he went on as he handed her the camera. “I can’t recall exactly where this was taken—before we got to Bear Creek and hiked on up?”

He was really distressed, but that was fine with her, she tried to tell herself, as she looked at the small photo on the screen. It was a picture of her and Pearl, holding hands, walking along Bear Creek before they went on up toward the falls. Tyler had taken the picture from the mountain side of the creek. The edge of forest was only about thirty feet behind them and full of shadows, but there was one really strange shadow, or tree trunk or…

“You mean that big, dark thing back in the trees?” she asked.

“Yeah. You said the bears are higher up.”

“Maybe it’s just a trick of the light. A large tree trunk mixed in with the others. The sun kept popping in and out.”

“I know, and the forest canopy made things look mottled, but…”

“It is really funny, isn’t it? I mean, not ‘ha-ha,’ but weird. Can’t be a person—too tall, with a strange-shaped head. What in tarnation?” she muttered as she continued to squint at it. She turned away, shaded the screen with her hand to
see it better. “Black bears don’t stand that tall,” she told him. “This would be more like a Kodiak or grizzly, and we don’t have them around here. I—I guess it could be a really tall person, but wearing what—and why? Can you make this bigger?”

“I’ve already tried, but it gets too fuzzy to make out. It needs more resolution with the zoom—to be clearer, I mean.”

“Don’t talk down to me, New York City photographer. What about printing it out then?”

“Yes, yes, I will, but my laptop and printer are back in Highboro at my cousin’s place, and I might even need more enhancement equipment than that. You said the sheriff and Jessie were going toward Bear Creek today. Maybe they’ll see it.”

“Yeah, but if it is something weird, what if it sees them first?”

In the first hardwood cove, when Jessie saw the bony bundle on the ground, she screamed. Drew racked his shotgun with a loud clack-clack and rushed to her. She stood with her hands pressed to her mouth, staring at the thing sprawled in the leaves.

“A deer carcass, that’s all,” he said, throwing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her against his side. Her shoulder bounced his shotgun. His weapons had bothered her before. Now they made her feel a bit better.

She nodded but could not stop shaking. Yes, she saw what it was now, the deer skull and spine with tattered gray hide clinging to it. It made her sick to see that scavengers had scattered the leg bones. Predators had no doubt been gnawing at it…Her mind would go no further.

“Come on,” Drew coaxed and pulled her away. “Don’t
let that get to you. Let’s keep looking. One cove down and more to go.”

“Seth would love to find something like that,” she told him as they walked away. “He loves to collect skulls from the forest.”

“I know. That cove had hardly any sang but the next one might.”

He was right. The next cove under Snow Knob had more sang than she could have imagined, nodding its stems and bounteous yellowing leaves at them, sheltered by the cool rock and the embrace of tall poplar, beeches and maples. Rich loam, leaf litter, water runoff—the perfect place for ginseng to flourish.

“Amazing,” she said. “I’ll bet this is what ginseng patches used to look like before everyone learned the value of it, medicinal and fiscal. If only there were places like this where I could get some roots—maybe leaves too—to test in my lab,” she said, walking through the nearly knee-high plants. “Either no one has found it for years, or it’s one of the places mother counted and told no one about. Drew, look. Over here! Someone’s dug out a part of the patch, and in a really strange way.”

He came over quickly. “It looks like some sort of pattern—a design,” he said.

A curved spade or hoe had slashed the earth where sang roots must have been dug out. A hoe like Junior Semple had been using?

“Mariah didn’t mark her sites in any way, did she?” Drew asked.

“Not the few times I was with her, not that I recall. But look at the sang berries, too, carefully arranged. What is that pattern supposed to be?”

“Not sure,” he said, squatting down to examine the bloodred berries closer. “Spears? Long claws? Fangs?”

Jessie shuddered. The sight of that ravaged deer carcass jumped into her mind again. “I wish we had Tyler Finch with us,” she said. “If we had a photo of this design, maybe we could figure out something later.”

“You’re sure it couldn’t be related to your mother’s count? I mean, like she put the berries there to mark the number or the site. Or when she saw someone had dug here, she replanted?”

“Not like that. To replant, you just sling them, imitating the way the plants drop them.” She moved outside of the edges of the patch to view the berries from the opposite direction. Were they in the pattern of fence posts, meaning keep out? No, Drew was right. It did look more like teeth or fangs. But then she caught sight of something bright yellow on the ground beneath the yellowing sang and moved to it.