Old Wounds (18 page)

They were deep into the Big Cove area when Elizabeth spotted the road they sought. A narrow, unpaved ribbon, it ran between tall trees and thick undergrowth. As they followed it, they passed a mailbox marked with the number 316. A modest brick house sat at the end of a long driveway. There were no cars and no sign of activity.

Rosemary looked eagerly up the road. “‘Further up and further in!’” She glanced across at her mother, who was smiling.

“That’s from the Narnia books, right?”

Rosemary nodded. “I taught Maythorn to say that when we went exploring. We were all over the mountain that last year—it was so wonderful to have all that space to roam.” She fell silent, hearing an echo of her father’s voice.
She could be hiding…or hidden…anywhere out there.

Elizabeth’s face was troubled. “That was one of the reasons your father and I wanted to live here, away from all the crime and random violence of the cities. And I
still
believe we were right.” Rosemary heard her breathe deeply before the next words tumbled out. “My mother had a fit when she heard about Maythorn. She was convinced that you and Laurie would be next. She threatened to sue for custody of you two, said we had put you all in a dangerous environment.”

“What? Did she really?”

“Oh, nothing came of it. She never could have won—but she
was
genuinely worried about you two. She loved you all a lot, you know. In the end, that’s what matters. At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself.”

The road had degenerated to a one-lane track when they found themselves at a dead end. A garden lay to one side and on the other was a small log cabin, surrounded by a chain-link fence. A sign beside the closed gate warned: BITING DOGS. There was a mailbox, but it bore neither name nor number.

“What do you think, Rosie? Does this look like where you came before?”

Rosemary stared at the house. A porch ran across its front, and beneath the roof’s overhang were several straight-backed chairs, and a tree stump serving as a table. The doors and windows were shut, mute and unrevealing.

“I…don’t know.”
But there’s something…
“No, I don’t think so. There’s no water. At Granny Thorn’s there was the sound of water, I’m sure of it.”

“But this must be Driver’s place.” Her mother pointed to a lean-to shed attached to the cabin. A half-finished carving of what appeared to be a bear stood on another stump under the shed. “There’s a pickup parked out back. Let’s see if anyone’s here.”

At once, Elizabeth was out of the car and approaching the gate. Just as she put her hand to it, two massive brindle hounds tore around the small house. They hurled their bodies against the gate, which sagged and rattled alarmingly under their attack. Elizabeth backed up and began to speak in a low, calming voice to the animals, but the dogs ignored her friendly overtures and continued to test the holding ability of the gate latch.

“Mum! Get back in the car! What if they—” But her mother was already retreating.

“So much for my way with dogs.” Elizabeth took her seat again and put up her window. “Maybe we’d better leave; if they come over the fence, they’ll probably chew up your tires, and then where would we be?”

She stared back at the little cabin and its canine guardians as Rosemary turned the car and started back down the road. “Really gorgeous hounds. I wonder what breed they are? They’re bigger than Plotts…maybe some mastiff there or—Wait a minute! I think I saw someone at the window.”

Rosemary stopped the car. Behind them, the barking dogs raced up and down along the fence nearest the road. After several minutes and no further sign from the house, Rosemary sighed and drove on.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe I didn’t see anything. But what do you want to do? I wrote down the number—we could try calling.” She reached for her cell phone. “If anyone’s there—” She tapped in the number and handed the phone to her daughter.

A woman’s voice was on the answering machine. She spoke the number and a few words in what must have been Cherokee. In the background, the hollow tones of a wooden flute played.

“If this is the home of Driver Blackfox, I really need to get in touch with him. I was a friend of his niece Maythorn—I mean, Mary Thorn Blackfox.” Rosemary gave her name and phone number, as well as a further entreaty, and waited.
Maybe if someone is really there, they’ll pick up. Maybe…

“No good,” she told her mother. “I guess I can try writing.”

“Let’s go on up the road a little more.” Elizabeth was searching the book she had bought. “There’s a waterfall we could go see.”

A waterfall.
Rosemary closed her eyes.
At Granny Thorn’s there was always the sound of water.

G
ROUNDHOG
F
ALLS

October 1985

T
HE TRAIL FOLLOWED
the rushing branch beside the laurels. It was steep and slick with fallen leaves and the damp of the recent rain. Driver was just above them, striding quickly up the steep, narrow path.

Further up and further in. Rosie whispered the words to herself, her breath coming in short bursts. We are going deep into the land of the Cherokee, led by Driver, the son of the chief. We will meet the Wise Woman, who will teach us the forgotten ways of our people. My sister and I are of the Chosen Ones.

There were logs, velvety with moss, across the trail at the steepest places, like steps, but you had to be careful not to skid on the slippery parts. Tall ferns grew in lush patches, their emerald plumes bowing as the three woods-wise Indians passed stealthily by.

Driver, wait up. Maythorn stopped at a turn where the path led to a footlog over the racing water. Rosie needs to rest. Her face is turning all red.

I’m okay. She tried not to sound out of breath. I can keep up. She would not ask how far it was, not for anything.

But Driver stopped and looked at her. He smiled and his teeth were white and strong against his dark skin. Rosie’s rosy, he said. You sit and rest a minute on that log over there and I’ll tell you a Cherokee story.

As Rosemary and Maythorn settled themselves on the log, Driver squatted effortlessly beside it and began to roll a cigarette. He lit it and inhaled deeply. I’ll tell you about the boys who didn’t want to stop playing, just like my grandfather told it to me when I was little. Driver settled himself on his haunches and blew out three rings of smoke, one after another.

Well, it was a long, long time ago, back before the white man was here. In this one Cherokee village there were seven boys who played together every day. All seven were best friends, just like you two girls are best friends. And every day they would get together and play games and run around and wade in the creeks and roam in the woods, just like you two.

Driver smiled his white smile at them and went on. But most of all, those boys, they loved to dance. They would make a circle and dance and dance till the sun went down and the moon came up, never paying attention when their mothers called them to come to supper. And after a while, their mothers got mad. The seven mothers got together and said, Let’s teach these bad boys a lesson. When they come in to dinner late, let’s give them stones to eat.

So the next day the seven boys were playing together as usual and, as usual, when their mothers called, they just kept on playing, pretending that they hadn’t heard. Their mothers called them again, but still they didn’t come. Again and again the seven mothers called, but the seven bad boys just didn’t pay any mind.

Finally, when it was black dark, the boys got so hungry, they decided to go home. They went home and they were bad hungry—ready for some chestnut bread or maybe some squirrel stew. They could smell the good smells of what their parents had been eating and their mouths were just watering.

Rosie’s mouth began to water too. She’d never had chestnut bread, but it sounded nice. She wasn’t so sure about squirrel stew. What happened then, Driver? Maythorn’s voice was impatient. Did their mothers really give them rocks to eat?

That’s exactly what they did. The seven mothers filled the bowls with smooth river rocks and set them down in front of the seven bad boys. This is all there is for boys who won’t come when we call them. We’ve already eaten up all the good chestnut bread and all the rich-tasting squirrel stew, the seven mothers and seven fathers said.

Well, that made those boys so angry that they jumped up and yelled at their parents. I told you that they were bad boys. They jumped up and yelled, If this is all the food you’ve got for us, we’re gonna go back outside and dance all night! And they ran back out to the middle of the village and joined hands and started dancing around in a circle.

Then the seven mothers and seven fathers felt bad and ran after them, but the seven boys just kept dancing faster and faster and faster. They danced so fast that their feet began to leave the ground. Pretty soon they were just a big spinning circle a few feet off the ground.

Stop! yelled the seven mothers. Stop! the seven fathers hollered. But the seven boys went faster and faster and their dancing circle kept rising higher and higher and higher.

Now Driver was standing and with his hand he was showing how the circle kept rising up. Rosie and Maythorn sat quite still, their eyes wide as if they were watching the ring of furiously dancing boys.

Driver’s hand rose up above his head as he continued the story. Finally, when the dancing boys were as high as the head of the tallest man there and all the mothers were wailing and crying and all the fathers were getting pretty worried too, at that very moment, the tallest man reached up and tried to grab one of the boys by the ankle.

Standing on his tiptoes, Driver stretched up his arm as far as it would go. He wiggled his fingers and caught at the empty air. Finally the tallest man caught one of the boys. He pulled as hard as he could, and suddenly that boy came falling down. He fell so hard and he fell so fast that when he hit the ground, he just kept going till the earth covered him right up. But the other six boys didn’t stop their dancing. Now they were a fast-moving, spinning blur, rising higher and higher all the way up into the night sky, right into the middle of all the stars.

The girls looked up at the sky where Driver was pointing.

Tonight I’ll show you a little circle of six stars way up there. The white men call it the Pleiades but our old people say it’s those six boys, still dancing.

There was a silence. Then Rosie whispered, What about the boy who went into the ground, Driver? What happened to him?

See that tall tree over there? Driver nodded his head. That’s a pine tree. That seventh boy turned into a pine tree. You see how the top points up? That’s because the boy’s pointing up at his friends. And the pine stays green, even in the winter, so you can see it pointing at the six dancing boys in the sky.

The two girls, mouths open, were staring up, squinting their eyes, looking for the lost boys. Driver clapped his hands to get their attention.

Okay, let’s go. Granny’ll be looking for us. He held out both hands and pulled them to their feet as if they were weightless.

Crossing the foot log was scary. Driver and Maythorn walked on it as if it was just part of the path, but when Rosie stepped on the slender tree trunk, damp and slippery above the water, she had a funny swimmie feeling in her head. She edged out cautiously, taking tiny steps and trying to be brave.

Do you want me to come get you, Rosie? Driver had stopped again and was looking at her with a funny expression.

She took a trembly breath. No, she answered and, looking straight at him, she walked right across without stopping.

Good girl. We’ll make a Cherokee of you yet, he said, and patted her shoulder. She felt that swimmie feeling again, but this time it was nice.

They continued on, always up, always along the creek, and she began to hear a dull roaring sound, like a heavy rain. It got louder and louder with every step they took, till finally she tugged at Driver’s shirt. What’s that noise? she wanted to know.

He grinned. Didn’t Mary Thorn tell you? That’s the old groundhog, old o-ga-na, grumbling in his cave.

She must have looked uncertain, because Driver squatted down beside her and said, You don’t worry. Won’t nothing harm you at Granny’s. Come on now, good girl, o-s-du a-geyu-tsa, we’re almost there.

One more turn, and the sound was very loud now. They pushed through the twisty-branched, shiny laurels that grew taller than Driver, and there before them was a little bridge—with handrails, she was happy to see. Beyond the bridge a snug log house nestled beneath more big laurels. Ferns grew on its wood-shingled roof and a wisp of smoke curled from the chimney. On the sagging porch stood a tiny, wrinkled woman in a dark green skirt and faded red blouse. A gray wool shawl covered her thin shoulders and her scanty white hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a single thin braid. She held her arms open wide and said something Rosemary couldn’t understand.

She says to make your manners to Groundhog Falls first. Driver jerked his head and Rosemary turned, and gasped.

A vast wall of rock, towering nearly vertical—up and up toward a sky blue as a gemstone—stood before her. It’s taller than a house, she thought. Maybe three houses. And wide—with many, many separate rivulets cascading from the top of the sheer cliff. Water poured over the edge in steady streams that hit projecting rocks, divided and redivided till the whole wall of living stone was a maze of streamlets, an ever-changing lacy pattern of white foam against black rock.

Rosemary stood and gaped. You never told me, she accused her friend. You never said anything.

Granny says it’s better that way. Maythorn glanced at her uncle for confirmation. Better not to think you know what you’re going to see. Granny says people see things better when they don’t know what to look for, isn’t that so, Uncle?

Late that night, lying in the little loft on thick pallets made from soft faded quilts, Rosemary and Maythorn whispered quietly. Granny was snoring gently in the bed that took up one corner of the main room and Driver had gone outside. His pallet awaited him before the guttering fire.

Why’s he gone so long? Rosemary felt a little anxious. Granny mostly spoke Cherokee, though she seemed to understand English perfectly well. Driver had said that Granny wanted to keep the old language alive and that was why she wouldn’t talk English. Maythorn, in spite of all her bragging, didn’t understand Cherokee as much as she had pretended to. Plus, Driver was a strong man, and here in the middle of the woods, with wild animals all around, and the constant roar of the falling waters that could hide the sound of stealthy footfalls—He’s not going far away, is he? Rosemary whispered.

Maythorn sat up cross-legged on her pallet. The fire’s glow illuminated her dusky face and danced on her glossy braids. The longer we stay here, the more Indian she looks, realized Rosemary, wondering if her own braids gave her some of the same coveted appearance.

Driver has trouble sleeping nights. Maythorn’s face was somber. He has bad dreams because he’s the one that shot my daddy. I was there when it happened.