Marcie's Murder (25 page)

In my spare time after we moved
,
I
’
d begun to research my family history. I suppose it was an attempt to maintain contact with the family I’d left behind in Williamson, although if I’m completely honest it was probably more to create a sense of belonging that hadn’t
previously
existed. I’d heard the word Melungeon before
while I was
growing up, and more in a pejorative sense than anything else. I asked my mother what it meant, since it obviously referred to our family in some way, and I guess I picked the wrong time,
an afternoon
when she was hung over and very tired, because she
got
upset
about it. I don’t remember now exactly what she said, but it was negative enough that I understood not to raise the subject again.

In Roanoke, though, it didn’t take very long to find that I was researching Melungeon history at the same time I was researching my own family history. I know that not many people from outside the Appalachian region would understand what I’m talking about. The Melungeons
are
an ethnic group that appeared in this region in the mid-eighteenth century. We were often referred to as free persons of color or mulattos because it was apparent we were a mixture–a
mélange
, if you know your French–of two, maybe three different races. There’s a distinctive physical appearance associated with us
:
dark complexion, dark hair
, eyes that are dark or startlingly green, high cheekbones, distinctly-shaped front teeth, and a bump at the back of our head.
Occasionally someone is born with six fingers instead of five.
As you can see, I’ve got the complexion, the dark eyes, the hair,
the teeth, and
the
bump. Only five fingers, though.

Melungeons
are
not a well-known ethnic group like the Cajuns or Creoles
.
P
eople
sometimes
don’t even realize they descend from a Melungeon family. I’m a good example. Often when talking about their family,
some of the old
people
who don’t know any better
will say something
ignorant
about a “nigger in the woodpile
.
”
O
r that one of their ancestors must have come over from
Spain or Portugal
or married an Indian. Cherokee is often a favorite choice. The way it stands right now, in terms of research into Melungeons as an ethnic group, no one really knows for certain
our
racial origins
. Most of the research conducted to date has been done
by amateurs, and not very well.

The few anthropologists who’ve done work on our group will only go so far as to say that the evidence suggests Melungeons originated as a group in
central
Virginia
early
in the eighteenth century. And for every amateur who insists that they began as Portuguese settlers or Turkish sailors stranded by Drake
,
there’s another
amateur
who insists that
the “
Turk
” element
actually refer
s
to a Catawba Indian settlement on the border
of
South Carolina that was known as Turkeytown.
Native Americans
living in this village were often called Turkey
Indians
or Turks for short, according to legend.
Some
who believe the Melungeons have a
Native American
origin suggest that they had roots among the Catawbas from this area.

One reason that people tend not to know about
Melungeons
is that we
lack a distinctive cultural identity.
We
d
o
n’t have a dialect of
our
own, separate religious practices,
distinctive music or cuisine,
habits of dress
,
or any other cultural element that would make
us
unique
other than our physical appearance
.
And even in that regard, m
ost families have been assimilated into the melting pot to such an extent that they
’
re considered
Caucasians
with
a dark complexion
and
nothing else
.

My
own personal
research
turned up a story passed down through the generations
that claims
my great-great grandfather Ike Roberts was the
Melungeon
son of a woman
from
the Saponi Indian
tribe.
It’s all anecdotal,
with no actual documentary evidence to back it up,
but I expect it’s the best I’m ever going to do, so I’ve decided to accept it as my ancestry.

So
you can see from my
store that
I’ve chosen Native American culture as a core part of my heritage. I promote Native American crafts
and small businesses of all kinds. Almost everything in this store has been made by a Native American artisan or artist.

Louise
Coffee
, here, is
a Mingo whose father was one of the mountain people of West Virginia who sold barrel hoops in Pittsburgh
back in the old days
.
An Indian hoopie, she
likes to say
.
When she first
said
that I was appalled, because I understood hoopie to be a pejorative term, but she laughs when she says it. It’s part of who she is. It doesn’t hurt that she’s one of the biggest suppliers of ginseng
in this part of the country. She’s worth a lot more than she looks.

She can still speak some of the Mingo language, which has pretty much disappeared today, and she’s been teaching me what she knows. I’ve been writing it down and I plan to publish a book under both our names. It’ll go in that rack right there with all the other books
published
by people in this area.

What does any of this have to do with Marcie Askew? I know I’m being very long-winded in telling my story, but as I said at the
outset
,
my relationship with Marcie began with a mistaken impression on my part.
To make a long story short, as I researched my family history and learned more about my Melungeon heritage
,
I decided it was my ethnic
appearance
that
was
causing people in Roanoke to snub me and my kids.
By the time
my
son left home and
my
daughter followed
two years later
,
I
’d had enough of Roanoke and a husband who was never at home.
I
filed for divorce, packed
my
belongings
,
and moved to Tazewell
. Later I moved
up
here
to Harmony when
I
saw an advertisement in the newspaper for a business for sale.
I
’d
got
ten
a lump sum settlement from
my husband
,
so
I
use
d
it as a down payment on this store
.
I
’
ve
been operating
it
now for
four
years.

I
first met
Marcie
at a Harmony Business Association fundraiser the
same
summer I opened the store
.
I was
very nervous
because I didn’t
know anyone and
I had no idea what
kind of community Harmony was going to be.
They put me at
a
table
with
the guy who runs the army surplus store. He’s a certified gun nut
. A
ll he wanted to do was talk firearms with the other men at the table. The guy sitting next to me owned the tire store down near the college. He didn’t introduce himself
,
and I had no idea who he was until later
on
. Sitting on the other side of me were
Chief
Askew and his wife, Marcie.
I
felt
very
uncomfortable
.

We
listened to the mayor’s speech, Billy got up to talk about “safe streets, homes and businesses” in Harmony, awards were handed out to various businesses for various things, and then an auction of antiques and sports collectibles began in an adjoining room to supplement the $100
-
a
-
plate ticket price. Funds raised were being donated to the local Baptist church that was rebuilding after a serious fire.

When
Billy
left his seat to deliver his speech, Marcie leaned across and said hello
to me
. When the auction began and people began to mill about, Billy went off to hang out with
people he knew
. Marcie
slid over and began to talk to me
.
I can’t properly describe the impact she made on me that evening.

It was obvious to me right away that she was a Melungeon. The complexion, the hair, the eyes all gave her away. I asked her what her maiden name was, and when she told me it was
Cole I
wondered
if
she might be descended from the Coles of Magoffin County, Kentucky
,
who were considered a part of the mixe
d-blood Carmelites of that area, so I asked her. She said she thought her grandfather was from Kentucky somewhere but didn’t really know
much
about it.

You have to
understand
that at
the
time I was obsessed with Melungeon genealogy. I asked her a few questions that a person might consider invasive, particularly given that we’d just met and she didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, but she was very gracious and patient about it all. That was Marcie, you see. She had a way about her that’s hard to explain. She told me her father’s name
,
his birth date,
and
that he
’d been
born and raised in Richlands. I filed it all away for later reference. I’m embarrassed to say that I spent quite a few hours researching her family history after that first night. Her father’s family
was from
Hancock County, Tennessee. Sure enough no doubt Melungeons.

I was fascinated by Marcie from the first moment I laid eyes on her. She had a magnetism about her. Underneath her calm, elegant exterior there was a sexuality that was impossible to ignore.
I could see
she almost overpowered
some men
just by being in the same room with them.

I hung on her every word that night, and it wasn’t long afterwards that she came into my store to ask my advice on the place next door. She wanted to open up a business of some kind and had more or less settled on a tea room. Her husband bought the property and told her she could do whatever she wanted with it. I had my doubts that a tea room would make any money in a little town like Harmony, but I gave her some ideas for marketing and advertising and wrote down the name and number of someone I
knew
who could help her with interior design.

She opened up the following spring and clos
ed
it
that
December when her sales had dwindled pretty much to zero. By then she was spending more time in here than she was
in her own shop
. This is a meeting place for a loose-knit group of women from the area, and people like to
stop in for a while and talk. In fact, she got the idea to reopen as an art gallery from a couple of my friends who
’
d stopped in to see if I would carry their paintings. One specialized in flowers, vegetables, that sort of thing,
painted right in the garden,
and the other
did
portraits of Native American girls and women. I really liked their work but I didn’t think this was the right place for it. It would kind of disappear among all the other stuff I have in here. Marcie came in while we were talking about it. The tea room had been closed for
several
months
,
and she was restless to do something
else
. She took them next door
,
and they struck a deal right away. Marcie reopened as an art gallery, found several other artists whose work she liked, and went from there.