Old Wounds (48 page)

D
REAMTIME

Halloween 1986

M
Y FATHER’S STRONG
arms were picking me up and carrying me. I knew then that I had died and was with him, like I wanted to be.
A-do-do,
I said in Cherokee, Father, I’ve killed the booger. Please, take me with you and keep me safe.

And then I was in Granny’s arms and I knew she must be dead, too, and I whispered to her that I never wanted to go back to the other place but would stay here with my father and her.

I heard someone say, We have to take her to the hospital, and I wanted to laugh because they didn’t know I was dead. The hospital and the police, the voice kept saying, but Granny hugged me close.

There’s no need for the hospital now, said Granny, and she whispered to me in Cherokee, telling me that I would be safe on the Boundary, among my own people forever and ever.

You’ll have a new name and Mary Thorn will disappear. No one will ever tell your secret.

I whispered back, in Cherokee because now that I was dead I could talk it as good as she could. Ever, ever, Granny Thorn?

The child’s blue lips scarcely moved and her words rode lightly on the faintest of exhalations. The old woman considered, consulting some inner knowledge. At last she leaned down to whisper to the child, who was smiling peacefully even as she slipped toward oblivion. I’ll keep you safe on the Boundary, my little daughter.

The child’s eyes drifted shut, her thin, torn body sagging in her great-grandmother’s arms. The old woman talked on, crooning to the unhearing child. And one day, and it may be many years off, could be your blood twin will come and call your true name. Only then will you be safe in both worlds. Sleep now, child; sleep safe in Granny’s arms.

At the wheel of the truck, jolting along the dark road to Cherokee, Driver Blackfox let out a great howl of despair.

53.

A
LL
S
OULS
D
AY

Tuesday, November 1

The guard stopped
them at the gate of the Oconaluftee Village, the living history museum of the Cherokee on the Qualla Boundary. “Sorry, closed for the season.” He pointed to the sign by the entrance.

“Driver Blackfox left a message that—” Elizabeth stepped forward.

There was a slight softening of the dark features, then the guard nodded and opened the gate to let Elizabeth, Phillip, and Rosemary pass. “Follow the arrows that point to the Council House,” he said, waving them down a path.

“I wish I knew what this was about.” Phillip took Elizabeth’s hand as they followed Rosemary through the village. In the summer, the re-created village was packed with tourists: families on vacation and busloads of kids from the nearby summer camps. Now it was eerily silent and deserted—a fitting home for ghosts.

“I don’t really know; there was a message from Driver Blackfox that we should bring Rosemary to the Indian Village today and take this special tour they’re doing at eleven for some school group. He said something else, that Granny Thorn had told him it was time. I have no idea what he meant—I thought Granny Thorn was dead years ago.”

They sat in the empty Council House, waiting for the eleven o’clock presentation. Outside, a muted din announced the arrival of more visitors.

A beautiful dark woman with long braids was shepherding a flock of schoolchildren and their teachers into the Council House. Wriggling and shoving, the boys and girls took their places on the rows of log benches that ringed the central hearth. The woman lifted her hand for silence and Rosemary stifled a gasp when she saw that the little finger was missing. Once the children fell silent, the woman began her story.

“Many years ago, when the Cherokee were troubled with enemies from other tribes and other countries, they struggled to find a way of not letting fear overcome their spirits. Some wise elder invented the Booger Dance and the People began to make masks and dress up like the very enemies who threatened them. They called the enemy the boogers and they did a dance that showed just how stupid and clumsy these enemies were. The People would watch the boogers falling down and making fools of themselves and they would stop being afraid.”

A girl on the front row raised her hand. “Did you ever do the Booger Dance?” Two boys beside her elbowed each other and whispered.

The guide was unperturbed. “Only once. But it worked…eventually.”

“Did a booger bite off your finger?”

The guide raised her left hand, palm out. A broad gold band circled the ring finger. She regarded her hand quizzically, as if noticing for the first time the missing digit. “As a matter of fact, he did. But I got away and that booger never bothered me again.” Her smile was serenely untroubled.

On the bench beside Elizabeth and Phillip, Rosemary was trembling with excitement as the guide continued her story. At last the talk ended, questions were answered, and the children began to follow their teachers out the door. The guide looked at the three of them.

“Did
you
have any questions?” Smiling, she took a step toward them. “That was the kiddie version of the tour—if you’ve read any of the material you probably know there’s a bawdy side to the Booger Dance ritual that I didn’t get into.”

“Maythorn.” Rosemary’s voice was choked and low.

The other’s brow wrinkled. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Her smile wavered, then vanished.

“Mary Thorn.” Rosemary’s voice was stronger now and she stood.

The young woman’s hands clenched. “No, you’ve made a mistake. My name is Mary Owl.”

Without shifting her gaze from the guide, Rosemary put her hand in her pocket and drew out the Looker Stone. Lifting it to her eye, she stared through it at her childhood friend. “Mary Thorn Blackfox: I
see
you.”

54.

K
NOWING

Tuesday, November 1

“Mary Thorn Blackfox,
I see you.”

This time the words were tinged with scorn. Years of sorrow, years of guilt, and now recognition of an old betrayal trembled in those words. The eyes of the two women were locked—brown to darker brown. They stared at each other silently till Mary Thorn, with a single strangled sound, turned her head.

“You ran away, Maythorn. You ran away and left him free to hurt more little girls.” Rosemary was shaking with anger and she grabbed the other woman’s arm. “How many more did he kill? We found bones in the basement and I cried and cried because I thought they were yours.”

Maythorn twisted away. “It was Tamra. He wanted me to call you, Rosie, but I called her instead. I told her that her mother was waiting for her in the basement…. When Tamara came, he put my sweatshirt on her and made me watch….”

“Maythorn, I always thought you were so brave—why didn’t you tell someone about him?”

“She couldn’t…. We couldn’t.”

They all turned at the sound of the new voice. Driver Blackfox stood in the doorway of the Council House.

“Maythorn got away from him but she was near about gone when we found her that night. She couldn’t hardly talk but she swore that she’d killed the booger who hurt her. That was all she said, then her eyes rolled back and I figgered she was dead. I put her in the truck, into Granny’s arms, and we headed out for the Boundary, like Granny said. I told Granny we ought to take Maythorn to a hospital, but Granny shook her head, said that if Maythorn lived, she’d be blamed for the death—Granny never trusted that the white law was the same for us Indians. Besides, she said, most likely Maythorn wouldn’t last out the night. Granny was bound and determined to get Maythorn back to the Boundary, where she belonged.”

Driver entered the Council House and went to his niece’s side. Gently, he led her to one of the benches. She dropped down, arms wrapped around her chest, making herself as small as possible.

“Well, like you can see, she didn’t die,” Driver told them. “But she was a long time coming back. And when her body was healed, her spirit was still broke. She didn’t talk for almost a year, and when she did begin to speak again, it was only in Cherokee, like Granny Thorn had talked to her all those months she was in bed, sick with fever and fear and Granny tending her with the old medicine ways. Granny said it was like a baby learning to talk and that the old half-blood Mary Thorn had died and come back a true Cherokee. That’s when Granny gave her a new name—Mary Owl. And that’s when Granny made me promise never to tell anyone about that night.”

“Driver, I don’t understand! How did you just happen to be there when Maythorn got away? How could you know? Did she call you? I don’t see how….” Elizabeth looked from Driver to Maythorn and back again. Neither met her eye.

Driver Blackfox drew a line in the dirt of the floor with his boot, then scuffed it out. “Maythorn called someone, all right. But it wasn’t me she called and she didn’t use no telephone.”

He lowered himself to the bench next to his niece. “The way it happened was this: my phone rang—it would have been early afternoon of that day—and it was Granny Thorn. She said we had to go get Maythorn, said she had a ‘feelin’.’ Well, we weren’t supposed to go after her till the next day, but I told Granny I’d be over to pick her up after a while and we’d go get Maythorn. I’d known since I was little that Granny wouldn’t take no for an answer when she had one of her ‘feelings,’ but I was in the middle of a carving—two foxes out of black walnut that I was going to use as the centerpiece for a show.”

Driver was deep in the memory, not looking at his rapt audience, but gazing instead into the distance as if seeing the picture his words painted. “The wood was doing right; my knife was sliding through it like it was butter and the foxes were coming clearer every minute—like just one or two shakes and they’d be free from the wood. Anyway, I kept at the carving, thinking a few more minutes wouldn’t make any difference to Maythorn.”

He paused and looked at each of them in turn. “All of a sudden I hear this high-pitched screech that makes me jump and the knife slips on the wood and buries itself in my forearm. I think I’m in real trouble, but I pull it out careful and there’s no bleeding to speak of. I get my first-aid kit and clean and bandage the wound. Just as I finish wrapping the gauze around it, the phone rings. I know right off who it is. She doesn’t even say hello, just, ‘Boy, you get over here now. I ain’t tellin’ you again.’”

Driver shook his head. “Well, I did like she said. Granny Thorn had powers and I figgered I was lucky she hadn’t hurt me worse than what she had for not minding her right off. We drove to Marshall County as fast as I could in that old truck of mine. Granny said we’d wait at the foot of the road, by the mailboxes. We waited there till it was dark and I thought Granny had dropped off to sleep. But then I hear her say, ‘Maythorn’s coming.’ And I get out and there’s a little whimpering noise and there she was, pulling herself along, coming down not the road from Mullmore, but the next one over, your road, Miz Goodweather.”

“Rosie, I was so afraid….” Maythorn looked at Rosemary with pleading eyes. “I almost died and Granny Thorn kept me away from everyone for such a long time. When I was better, there were things I couldn’t remember…things I thought might have happened and things I thought I must have dreamed. It finally seemed like it might all have been a dream, except for the scars and this….” She extended her mutilated hand, then tucked it back under her elbow and looked away.

Tears were rolling down Rosemary’s face, but she made no move toward Maythorn.

“Driver,” Elizabeth said, “why didn’t
you
do something? When you found out that she hadn’t killed him, that Mike was still alive—a monster who could hurt a little girl like that—how could you just walk away?”

Blackfox shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do. For a long time Mary Owl wasn’t talking, and when she did start, she wouldn’t say who it was cut her. And she didn’t want to go back to that mother of hers, that was for sure. The police had been out here—took me in and asked me questions, even got into the old thing with my brother’s death. They roughed me up till I damn sure wasn’t going to give
them
any help. Finally when they had to let me go, I came back here and stayed put. Later I heard the whole Mullins family had moved away from the place in Marshall County. Didn’t know where they went. And didn’t try very hard to find out.”

“But your mother, Maythorn? How could you let
her
go on all these years, wondering what had happened to you?” Elizabeth persisted, trying to understand, in spite of a growing feeling of apprehension.

“My mother!” The young woman’s words were black and bitter, stones dropping into an icy, bottomless pool. “Do you know what my mother used to tell me, back when I was Mary Thorn Mullins? Time after time, she told me that I was a curse to her with my dark skin and Indian looks; she said I should never have been born—”

“She couldn’t have meant that. She—”

Quietly and deliberately, Mary Owl began to unbutton her blouse. She walked over to Elizabeth and pulled open the garment.

A neat procession of puckered scars—some small and faint, others indicative of deeper wounds—marred the smooth brown skin of Mary Owl’s back and shoulder, a cruel chronicle of years past.

The young woman reached back to lay slender fingers on the ugly marks. “Mama had an old-fashioned curling iron she used on Krystalle’s hair. She heated it on the stove, said it worked better than the new kind.”

Mary Owl traced the length of the scars, one after another. “That last year she used it on me too, when she’d had too much to drink.”

Nausea swept over Elizabeth and she stumbled blindly toward the door. “The other mask was for
her
. Oh, god! I should have known…. Me, of all people. I should have tried to do something….”

Outside, Phillip caught up with her at the bench where she was sitting, head in her hands. “Elizabeth, sweetheart, how could you have known anything? She never told you….”

Just as Mary Owl had done, Elizabeth began to unbutton her shirt. She pulled one arm free and held it out for him to see the ragged procession of barely visible burn scars that marked the surface of her inner arm.

“These
are why I should have known—I should have recognized a child who was living through the same sort of misery I’d known years before.
My
mother didn’t have a curling iron, just a cigarette. She was always so sorry afterward. And I covered up for her, told her it was okay.” Elizabeth’s voice faltered but she continued. “I never told anyone the whole truth about her—not even Sam. Even when I had my bad dreams and he would wake me and make me feel safe again. I could have told him, but that would have made it…made it real. If it was just a dream…”

She looked at Phillip with a bleak gaze. “If it was just a dream, I could still believe she was just sick, that she really loved me.”

Hot, angry words rose to Phillip’s lips, but as he met Elizabeth’s eyes and saw not the woman but a still-vulnerable child looking out, the anger gave way to another feeling. With infinite tenderness, he bent his head to lay his lips on the old wounds.