by Laura Hunter
“How have I failed you, Great Spirit?” Beloved Mother asked as she picked up sturdy limbs for the bier.
The villagers found her in the close woods, stooped over, her head facing the ground. A man’s voice quivered behind her. “We’ll do this for the child.”
Beloved Mother straightened. She looked into the old man’s eyes. His dark eyes showed nothing but emptiness.
She moved back down the path and threw back her head. “Is it the white woman who sleeps with my son?” she asked Great Spirit.
Great Spirit does not hear. He is exhausted. He settles in and naps behind the storm cloud.
Beloved Mother stayed in the village another fortnight using all the healing powers she had. The poignant odor of cedar permeated the village as she shaved the sacred wood and smoked each dwelling. Her clothing carried the aroma from house to house. The epidemic of cough, fever and vivid red spots had settled on the village so heavily that Beloved Mother came home only to pick up more garlic, ginger and hog fat. She gathered ashes to hold grease and garlic together for chest or neck poultices for her people.
It was important that she used garlic remedies before ginger, though she was not convinced the garlic was a better remedy. She had no information to use as a base for her treatment. At least she could re-use the garlic to make a poultice or a drink of garlic and honey once she had rubbed garlic on the soles of the sick. But with this disease villagers were withering away, especially children. Every cabin had one or more Cherokee coughing then sleeping in a hot, sweaty body. Her purple coneflower brew had no effect. Her people continued to lose confidence in her power, to turn their backs when meeting her, and to take children to the creek themselves. They returned, and the next day the children lay limp and damp on their cots, waiting for their spirit mists to rise.
She could not use all her ginger. Three generations of Beloved Mothers had preserved at least two cuttings to continue the stock. She had one with her. The other was stored on Tall Corn’s mantle in the carved box that held the polished shell. After eight years of living with Two Tears and teaching her herbs, plants, medicines and their recipes, she could leave Two Tears alone in her house. The ginger cutting would be safe.
Exhausted, Beloved Mother slept through the night and into the next day on the ancient one’s floor. Mid-morning, she was startled awake by the voice of Tall Corn. She sat erect on the blanket. “What did you say, old man?”
The old man did not answer. He sat facing the closed door as if he waited for Death to enter and take him to the river. Beloved Mother asked again. He did not move. She slapped her hands together to get his attention. He did not respond. She used her hands, then her knees as leverage, to lift her stiff body and edged to the back of his chair, unseen. Here she clapped sharply near his head. He didn’t move. The strange red spots had left him deaf.
Tall Corn called to Beloved Mother again, this time in the language of the dove. Beloved Mother gathered her medicines and her gourd and left the village to see to her only son.
Chapter 5
Upon returning from meeting Beloved Mother at the rock overhang, Tall Corn chuckled as he pulled Briar’s legs off the cot where he slept and spun him around so the boy’s head would not hit the floor. Two Tears entered the room at the sound of Briar’s grumbling. She found Tall Corn bending over Briar, shaking his shoulders.
“What happened?” she asked.
“We decided last night. Briar must go to the field to learn the life of the corn. He’ll one day need to feed us when we’re old.” He scratched Briar’s head. “Beloved Mother agrees.”
Two Tears put her hands on her hips and looked Tall Corn in the eye. “No. He’s not yet nine seasons. He’s too young to go to the fields.”
“You’d have him stay here, sleep all day, and learn the life of a woman?” Tall Corn flung back his shoulders. “You’d have the village laugh at him when he reaches his manhood because he can’t feed his family?”
He spoke to Briar, still abed. “Get up. If Great Spirit blesses us, we may have rain today.”
Briar wiggled himself off the bed.
“He’ll learn,” Two Tears said. “He’ll just learn later.”
“Stop arguing,” Briar said. “I’ll go to the field. Father’s right. I do need to learn the fields.” Briar rubbed the back of his neck and opened the door.
Tall Corn followed and patted the boy’s shoulders.
In the barn, Tall Corn picked up a triangular-headed planting hoe. He held it up to show Briar how the edges must be sharp so dirt around the upper roots could be loosened without cutting the lower roots. He turned the hoe over and showed him how the vee-shaped side of the blade cut tiny furrows around the corn to allow rainwater to settle in the indentation and soak both upper and lower roots.
He took a steel file and slid it in one direction, away from his body, over the edge of the blade. He flipped the blade and sharpened the other side. Briar cringed at the rasping sound of metal on metal. Over and over, Tall Corn honed the edges. When he finished, each side appeared to have a silver ribbon down its edge. He lightly touched the sharp rims to test for smoothness. “Fine as my skinning knife,” he said and smiled.
He carried the hoe by its neck and walked with Briar to the cornfield, not far from where he first saw Briar’s mother. Tall Corn put the triangular point to the ground and scraped, loosening the soil’s surface. He moved to the next stalk and repeated. He let Briar try. Once he saw that Briar handled the soil with tenderness, he returned to the barn.
As the morning grew long, clouds gathered to wet the soil. Silent rain fell straight to the ground. Such a gentle a rain, it did not even rustle corn leaves. Briar worked on, ignoring his wet back. Near the end of the far row, rain increased. Lightning outlined the silhouette of the barn where his father worked. He recalled the story of his grandfather, Tall Corn’s father, and the lightning strike. He dropped his hoe and ran for cover.
He met his father mid-field. With rain dripping from his hair, he hugged Tall Corn. “I was scared for you.”
“Where is your hoe, boy?”
“I must have dropped it in the field,” Briar answered. “I’ll get it.”
“Go inside and dry. I’ll get it. Can’t stay out in the rain.”
Two Tears had food on the table. Boiled beans, corn, smoked venison and flat bread. Briar ate with the appetite of a boy pushed from within by growth.
Near dusk, she sent Briar to the field to find his father. Not certain where he dropped the hoe, Briar wandered among the green stalks that rose taller than his head. At one point, he rested, heavy mud slowing his step as it built up on his shoes. It was then that he heard the sound, a sound much like that of a yard cat caught between barn slats. A cross between a whimper and a meow.
Cutting across thick rows, he ran. He found his father on the ground. The hoe, stuck in the soft tissue below his knee, was embedded up to the neck, so deep that only the handle showed. Mud and blood streaked his pants leg. They puddled together where his father had fallen, before seeping into the ground.
“You came,” Tall Corn whispered. He tried to get up. “I slipped on the mud.”
Briar tried, but he could not lift his father. “I’ll go for Mother.”
Tall Corn said no. “Grab the handle of the hoe and when I say pull, pull as hard as you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Get the hoe out of my knee so I can walk. When the hoe’s out, we’ll wrap the knee with my shirt and I’ll lean on you. We’ll go slow and your mother’ll tend my wound.”
Tall Corn grabbed the handle where it met the metal. Briar took the opposite end.
“No. Come to this side with me. Else we push against each other.”
Briar waded around the hoe handle through the mud, now so slick he caught corn stalks so he wouldn’t fall. The steadiness of the corn stalk reminded him that Tall Corn had asked him earlier to plant bean seed at the base of the corn so runners would have support through the summer. Had Briar planted s
quash between cornrows to smother out weeds as his father had asked, there would be less mud, less chance for his father to have slipped. He told himself, Don’t cry. Not now. Show Father I can give back for what I’ve cost.
Standing next to his father, Briar pushed the handle away when his father gave the word. Tall Corn gritted his teeth, but a gasp escaped his clenched lips when the hoe tore out of his knee.
Briar jumped back to avoid the squirting blood. After his father rested, Briar helped him to his feet and the two struggled down the cornrow, cutting a reddish slice in the mud where Tall Corn dragged his useless leg. Dark followed the farmer and his son back to the house.
The eve before the end. Great Spirit knows this, but he is busy in Alabama with Judge Horton, trying to convince him to set aside a guilty verdict for Haywood Patterson, one of the Scottsboro Boys. Great Spirit questions whether Judge Horton listens any closer to what he says than Beloved Mother does.
Inside the house, though the day was August-hot for June, a fire burned low in the side fireplace. Earlier, Two Tears had Briar stoke a fire. She needed soot to scotch blood seeping from her husband’s knee.
Two Tears worked with her husband’s wound into the night, ignoring the smothering heat. The tin roof warmed the little room enough. Add the fire and the temperature brought out her sweat.
His head low to hide tears on his cheeks, Briar hung back while his mother tended the open gash beneath his father’s knee. “I didn’t mean. . .” He had tried several times throughout the afternoon, but he could not say it. The weight on his heart was too heavy for a child to lift.
“Bring me cool water to stave off this fever.”
Briar stepped easy into the darkness and felt his way to the well.
Brother Moon acknowledges the boy’s guilt and refuses to aid him.
With Briar back inside, his mother directed him to shave off more ginger. Briar shaved slowly. He had heard the Beloved Mother speak of ginger’s value. The root was too precious to reckon with. Use all the root and the medicine was gone.
“Hurry,” Two Tears commanded.
Throughout the night, Briar rushed to the spring. To the carved medicine box on the mantle. To the bed. Outside the house to dampen sheets for coolness. His body ached from the strain that had laid itself upon his shoulders the moment he found his father bleeding in the dirt.
Morning. Two Tears’ uncombed hair straggled loose from her long braid. “I’m going to the outhouse. Make him drink,” she told Briar. “His knee’s swelling.”
Briar spooned water to his father’s lips, only to have it dribble onto his collar. Tears dripped off the child’s narrow chin.
Evening. “His leg’s swelled much as it can without splitting open,” Two Tears said. “Get you some them beans off the stove and eat some supper. I’ll eat later,” she told Briar.
Then night. She held the lamp close and whispered, “Oh, God. Red streaks.” She pulled back the cover. “They’re almost to his crotch.”
Two Tears sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Tall Corn’s good leg. She wept, drinking in tears that tracked down the two scars that split her left cheek. She swallowed her sorrow, this time deeper than ever before.
Tall Corn groaned, his raspy voice no more than an undertone. “Don’t cry, Wife.”
“I can’t heal you,” she said. “I’m not a Beloved Mother.”
“Don’t worry. My spirit has called her to come.” Tall Corn tried to raise himself from the bed.
Two Tears took the back of his head in her hand and lowered him to the pillow. “I hear there’s a white doctor in Boone. Tomorrow first light, I’ll send Briar to bring him.”
“No,” Tall Corn said. “Beloved Mother won’t have it.”
Two Tears took Tall Corn’s hand. “I got to do what I know’s right, not what she says.” She massaged his palm. “I ain’t going be no Beloved Mother no how.”
“Wait for her. My spirit pleads with her.”
“Who made her Beloved Mother anyway?” Two Tears chuckled. “You’re so cold your fingernails are blue.” She drew up a quilt and tucked it under his shoulders. “I’m going to get wood to stave up the fire.”
Two Tears stepped off the porch and looked up. There by the chimney top hovered an irregular foggy cluster. Fog before evening, after a day hot from the sun. It’s the sign, the first sign Beloved Mother taught her. Tall Corn’s spirit mist called what was left of Tall Corn’s spirit. “Come,” it said. “Come with me.”
Two Tears would send Briar for the white doctor, even if Beloved Mother disapproved. To convince her, she will point out the streaks and the purple and green skin forming around the cut. Have her breathe in the growing stench of the wound.
She gave up on the logs and went back inside.
Sunrise of the third day fog hugged the ground. Briar, a sack of food flung over his shoulder, opened the door to leave.
Before him stood Beloved Mother. Tall and proud, she filled the doorframe. “Where you going?” she demanded.
Briar eyed her up and down. Her full skirt, its rose pink border sweeping the tops of her scuffed work boots. Her frayed denim jacket, the one Tall Corn cast off during the Month of the Cold Moon, the month Tall Corn and his mother tried to celebrate Old Christmas. The celebration that came nigh sending him and his mother off the mountain. Her thick braid rested on her shoulder much like a fat black snake, unlike his mother’s, whose hair reflected a tinge of orange in sunlight. And, as always on her arm, her intricately woven pine straw basket cradling her small gourd rattle.
He glanced back into the room, his eyes questioning his mother beside the iron bedstead. Bent over his father, she bathed his body against climbing fever. Short shallow breaths disturbed the room.
“Answer me, boy,” Beloved Mother said.
He turned back to his grandmother. “I am Silent Wolf, and I am going to Boone.” He lifted his chin. “To bring a doctor for my father.”
Beloved Mother pushed the child back. “I heard my son’s spirit call and I decide. I am she who knows.” She stomped toward the bed, her heavy brogans accenting the hollowness beneath the floor. “Great Spirit gave me responsibility for my people,” she declared. “He didn’t include some white man.”
Two Tears stepped away from the bed. Tall Corn lay ashen, near the color of his bleached cotton blanket.
Beloved Mother knelt by her son’s bed. Under the porch eave, a dove’s coos awakened his mate.
Two Tears brought a cool cloth for Tall Corn’s face. Beloved Mother rose and stood between the two. Two Tears waited, her hands clasped over her belly.
Beloved Mother inspected Tall Corn’s putrid leg. “What have you done?” She whispered in an attempt to harbor anger rising within her. This unfamiliar fierceness had grown within her inch by inch since she found Jackson Slocomb outside the village, dead and covered with red spots. Though she battled against its escalation, she knew she was losing. She wrung her brown-splotched hands.
“Why send for the white doctor for my son?” Without waiting for an answer, she took her worn, tan gourd-rattle from her pine basket and held it level with her chest. “I am the healer.” She pulled a quilt over the wound and smoothed it. She rattled the gourd hard over the leg.
Tall Corn lay as still as the boy child in the village. “Call for the little people. Ask the Dogwood People to help,” he murmured.
“You may know Cherokee ways, Tall Corn, but I’m Beloved Mother. I choose.” She shook her bean-filled gourd and stomped rabbit-like up and down beside the bed, harder with each pass. The rhythm of her ancient chant and pounding feet punctuated the gourd’s tapping sound.
Briar crept closer to the door.
Above the frame house, Great Spirit wrestles with his girth and pulls a cloud up to his chin. With the Alabama issue settled, he can now rest, though it seems he has no power over his people. He ignores Beloved Mother’s rants.
From behind, Two Tears snatched the rattle from her mother-in-law’s hand. “This gourd’s usel
ess. You’re letting my husband die.” She raised the gourd above her head. “I can’t heal him. You can’t heal him.” Exasperation slipped down her chest and squeezed her breathing. Her shoulders drooped. “A sparrow flew in this room yesterday,” she whispered.
“Mama?” Briar called from the doorway. “Is that true?”
Two Tears straightened and circled the gourd around her head. Its innards buzzed as if something living was trapped inside. “Somebody help me!” she cried out over the unnerving jangle. “His spirit mist is over the roof,” she said quietly.
Beloved Mother stood totem-like, glaring at the wall above Tall Corn’s bed.
Two Tears flung the gourd against the rock chimney. It shattered and hard brown beans rolled, like pellets, across the plank floor.
Cheeks flushed, Two Tears raised her voice in an attempt to pierce Beloved Mother’s stubborn belief. “Briar will go for the white doctor.” She caught a breath and lowered her voice. “And I pray to the Great Spirit that my husband remains until he comes.”
Beloved Mother stared at Two Tears. “Great Spirit don’t speak to you.”
“When did he ever speak to you?” Two Tears shot back.
Beloved Mother flinched as the accusation pierced her guilt for turning a deaf ear.
From the bed, Tall Corn mumbled “Get Slocomb.” He tossed his head on the pillow. “Two Tears?” He lifted his right hand and whispered, “Come with me.”
Briar jerked and moved inside the open door as if to make a dash for his mother, as if he believed she might become mist and float to the sun as his father commanded. Brisk morning air blew his long, uncombed hair toward his face, hiding his eyes behind a black mask. He put out a hand to keep her from moving.