Beloved Mother

by Laura Hunter

  “Yep. Shot from down low, Sheriff says. The whole place set on fire with kerosene.”

  Lily flinched. “The dog? What happened to the dog?”

  Rafe’s hands wind around each other, the cigarette bobbing from his lips when he spoke.

  “Shot.”

  “But I…” Lily stood up. “It takes a mean person to kill an animal. Eli may not be able to talk to people in their own way, but Eli, he’s not a mean person.”

  “I don’t know. I just know he’s not safe on this mountain.” Rafe rubbed his palms together, letting the stub of cigarette linger on his lips. “I don’t know what else to do.” His chin drooped.

  Weariness settled on Lily like an oversized bird of prey. “Let me see to my biscuits.” She moved from the swing an old, old woman. “I’ll wake him and we can eat. You stay, but you let me tell him.”

  She left Rafe lighting another Lucky Strike. Lily climbed the wooden ladder to the sleeping loft. The sound of her voice singing as if to a babe, “Awake, awake my drowsy little one…” fluttered through the door and into the woods beyond the road.

  In a moment, Lily was back at the door. “Come in and have a bite to eat with us, Mr. Rafe. We got plenty.”

  Inside, Eli sat at the table drinking milk, his back to the door. Rafe sat in a chair facing Eli. Sunlight behind Eli hid his face. Neither spoke.

  Lily pushed a bowl of greens and a plate of biscuits across the table and sat to eat. “You got children, Mr. Rafe?” she asked.

  Rafe’s head twitched a bit. He stared past Eli and out the door. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have.”

  “Ever lost a child?” she prodded. Gabe had told her Rafe’s daughter, the girl he called CeCe, had run away the year before.

  “I have.” A look of despair he had worn earlier on the porch stepped inside and settled over his face.

  “Humph,” Lily said. Emotions rose up inside Lily. Should she be angry at Rafe for taking Eli from her? Should she be grateful that he would have a better place to live? The reality of not having Eli come and go in his own erratic way pushed out her tears. They slid one-by-one down her cheeks.

  Eli looked from one to the other and chewed his biscuit.

  Lily decided against telling Eli he would not be coming back. She did not pack his clothes. What would he take? Woolen socks he used as gloves? Worn tennis shoes without laces? Holey underwear? He had worn only underpants when she saw him hanging in the tavern’s backroom. Tears filled her eyes again. She shoved the thought of that night behind her.

  “The owl and the pussy cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat,” she started with the nursery rhyme line, their ritual parting. She told Eli he was going with Rafe. “You be careful now. Things will hurt you, beautiful things. But you don’t reach for them. Don’t reach out to stroke a live rattler. He might not love you.” She pulled his face to hers and kissed his forehead.

  “I honor you, my friend, the tree, and bring you thanks now. Blessed be.” Lily startled herself with how unforeseen the blessing Kee Granny taught her as a child had bubbled up, but with Eli’s going it was right that it came to her lips.

  Eli reached into his pocket and took out a tiny carved wolf. Lily had seen the quality of work before. “Eli?” she questioned. “Where…?” He took her hand and placed the silent wolf in her palm.

  Rafe directed Eli to sit in the front seat. Rafe cranked the Buick. The motor hummed and the car simply inched away. Little swirls of smoke breathed out the exhaust. Eli looked back through the window, both hands against the glass. Lily could see the tears on his face and read his lips through the pane: “Gotta get the cat.”

  “I got the cat,” she called back. She picked up Sunday and stretched out her arms so Eli could see the calico. She brought the cat back, close to her face. As the long black car moved down Turtleback Mountain, Lily stroked Sunday’s fur to calm her. Rafe and Eli were gone before Lily could see if Eli had smiled at Sunday.

  Inside she dropped on her mother’s bed and stared at the ceiling. She realized she was crying when her ears filled up with tears.

  Chapter 44

  Uriah Parsons had spent his years wandering about looking for a place where he could ground himself. In 1782, he would return at age 37, but not to the valley, for he had learned of and respected the Cherokee Eden as if it were his own. He acknowledged what he perceived to be their ownership, never knowing Cherokee have no concept of ownership. They are of the land. The “People of the Land.” Had he realized he searched for a moral code, he would have had to admit he found it on Turtleback Mountain.

  He returned to the mountain, the humped Turtleback, so named by Long Hunters. Low-lying hoary clouds, not unlike silvery fog, infiltrated its massive trees. Using land allotments earned from his time with General Washington and allocations for settling the West from the Governor of the Virginia colony, he returned to claim the whole of Turtleback Mountain. Never realizing that territory, mountain or meadow, valley or cove, belongs to itself, to no man. Never knowing that Great Spirit, to prove Sister Sun and Brother Moon wrong about the destructive nature of man, had given land the power to fight back.

  Uriah Parsons would have been proud to know that his grounded great-great-granddaughter was more committed than even he to honoring tradition.

  After Winston Rafe left with Eli, Boone Station refused to acknowledge the sunlight. Each day dawned gloomy and clouds grew dirtier, heavier, as the hours wore on. Each day, sadness slammed into her head hard, then harder. The pounding was so intense her heart swelled and squeezed out any room in her bosom meant for air. To calm herself, she stroked Sunday’s back and ears and let the calico give, in turn, by rubbing Lily’s skin with her rough tongue.

  And it rained. And rained. The road washed out, preventing Sheriff Youell from reaching Boone Station to question Eli. Or Lily. Ditches overflowed and the stream behind Boone Station swelled and smothered its banks. Lily waited.

  After a dreaming night of Eli alone in a strange room surrounded by tawdry brown and black wallpaper, Lily stepped out on the porch, Sunday at her feet. An exhale of wind blew the door shut behind her. Lily walked to the road and looked back at Boone Station. The house, its door shut, its windows down against last night’s chill, had no life about it. Lily asked herself if she had lived here these years, if Rattler and Kee Granny were real or imagined, if Owl still served as her guardian. She could not say what of her life had been real or what she had imagined.

  She headed down the road where the cut-off led to Old Man Farley’s place. Wandering, aimless, all she cared about was gone. Just she and Sunday and Gertie, Lily’s ancient goat, left on the Turtleback. At one time, when her mother lived, when Gabe lived, when Eli was with her, with her like a brother, she remembered Kee Granny telling her she had to face life with courage. She had done that. She did that when she took up the shovel to Briar Slocomb. But she didn’t kill Briar Slocomb. He killed his own mother. Now he was killing her with his accusations that compelled Winston Rafe to take Eli away.

  Lily and Sunday reached Farley’s shack. Lily stooped to enter. Thinking back, she recalled Winston Rafe had stooped to enter Boone Station. Had she seen him step up on her porch, she would know that he had stooped to miss being hit on the head with Uriah Parsons’ creaking Boone Station sign.

  She sat. Her back rested against a far corner. She looked out at fallen tree trunks covered with lime-colored moss. Though the moss promised vibrant life fed by damp and shade, she knew the logs rotted from within. A layer of leaves, brown and crisp before their crumbling, hid new growth trying to push itself upward. Sun rose and warmed the air around her. Lily relaxed.

  Anna appeared before Lily, as on a stage. She dragged a mop across the floor as she tried to corral milk Lily had just spilled. Lily stood in the door, a child no more than nine. The summer before Covington and Eli. It had been another of those “I didn’t mean to” events when Lily had stumbled over the threshold and emptied a bucket of Gertie’s milk onto the floor. Lily pouted up t
o cry.

  “Milk. Water. They’re the same. When it’s spilt, it’s gone,” Anna said. “But there’s a difference. Spilling or pouring out.” She swiped the mop. “I learned that a long time ago.” Standing in the door, Anna gazed at Lily. She followed Anna’s eyes. In the moment Anna glanced away, Lily grew into a young woman.

  The floor now dry, Anna spoke to her daughter from the other side. “Water spilt can be forgiven. Water poured out shows no respect. Never let nobody pour out your water.” Anna leaned against the mop. “Not your water. Not your blood.” Anna vanished.

  Lily stroked Sunday’s coat where she slept in the bow of Lily’s belly. She straightened her leg to resist a cramp.

  Within an instant, a great silent cloud covered Turtleback Mountain’s top ridge. Inside the shed, Lily watched white mist hide everything beyond the door. The mist accentuated the door, transforming the entrance into an arch. A tingle ran over her from head to toe. She gasped. The building she had perceived to be a shanty was now a chapel.

  A puff of wind brought the mist inside and filled the shack. It should have been cold and damp. Instead, it cloaked Lily like a warm blanket and surrounded her, so soft she felt cocooned in new cotton. She knew no fear, even if this proved to be her death-mist. She accepted this presence without Kee Granny or Ena having to give her notice.

  “Let me see your face.” Lily spoke to the mist.

  “Arise. The time has come.”

  Lily did not raise her head until the last reverberation faded. “I will,” she said quietly. “Are you Great Spirit or my mama’s God?”

  “Lily, I say get up.”

  “You know I have killed.”

  “I know what you have and have not done.”

  “But I killed Briar Slocomb within my heart.”

  “Others have done worse.”

  “I can’t. I thought I could make it right, but I couldn’t.”

  “Like prophets before you, I command you by name. Lily Marie Goodman. Get up and go.”

  She dragged herself toward the opening. Twigs scraped her knees and palms. Her blood mixed with dirt packed hard by generations of hooves and feet. She stopped at the threshold. “I can’t go,” she whimpered. “I’m afraid.”

  “You have the strength. Go.”

  “Where?”

  “Consider the night of the fire. The icy water that cleansed your wounds. Does it know where to flow? Imagine sun shafts. How they connect earth to the sky. The hush of a moonbeam and the steadfastness of Owl. Celebrating the joy of Eli. All these, I tell you, are sacred. Think on these things and you will know how to place your feet.”

  “I don’t know the way.”

  “I am with you.”

  A movement startled Lily. Out of the mist, Owl hooted himself in and settled on his rafter.

  “I’m up,” Lily said aloud. “But first, I must tell the bees.”

  Owl hoo-hooted. Lily picked up Sunday. The two left Old Man Farley’s shack with Owl circling behind them.

  Chapter 45

  Spring refused to show itself on Turtleback. There had been within Lily a sprout growing, waiting to burst into bloom since the mountain voice had spoken to her at Old Man Farley’s shack. Now, Lily needed time to nurture what she felt maturing within. She stood at the edge of the mining road and looked down into the valley. The shadow of Turtleback Mountain behind her had kept the ground moist with the moldy smell of rotting pine straw and oak leaves even in summer. This mountain had always had its own fragrance, season by season, a fixed reminder for Lily of its immortality.

  Below her the town of Covington sat. From her viewpoint, rooftops in grays, greens, blacks, lay each next to each in rows that filled in the valley. Broken Rock Creek wrapped itself around the town like a wide brown rope, frayed by white ruffles the rapids created as they slapped against boulders. From Lily’s stance, rocks looked more like stepping stones crossing the river. Logs lay along the banks like remnants of bridges long fallen into disrepair. Above the town, sunlight threw an outline of Spencer’s Mountain on Covington’s opposite side, splitting hardwoods in two, trees in a tinge of greens and the purple blossoms of the Redbud, while lower down, shadows left them gray, almost black, near the river.

  Lily could have more easily examined the scene from behind Boone Station; but, since the mine collapse that took her mother’s grave, the back of Boone Station had begun to drop ever so slightly, tilting itself down the mountain. She no longer sheltered her animals there. She feared she would slide down the rock steps, then tumble, stone-like, and bounce off outcroppings of powdery white rock, level to level until what would have be left of her body rolled down a gentle grassy incline into the waters of Broken Rock Creek. Only a ripple would mark where she entered the cold river water.

  “Would that I could reach up and touch the sky with my own two arms,” Lily said to Sunday. “I would swing us away from this place.”

  She could thank Breakline Mines for the deterioration of Boone Station. Her mother buried on her head in an abandoned mine shaft. Kee Granny shot by her own son. Briar Slocomb running rumors like wild greenbrier that refused to die. Eli holed away with people he never knew in a group home on the other side of Spencer’s Mountain. She thought of visiting Eli. She needed to go there, but she knew he would not understand her leaving him any more than he had understood why she had him go.

  There had been a time the previous year, when, in delirium, Anna had spoken only in quiet murmurs. Lily had to bend her ear to her mother’s lips to understand the words. “Sending me away was a greater evil,” Anna said, “than any other you ever done to me.” Though Lily did not understand whom Anna meant, she knew her mother’s pain, for she carried the burden of Eli’s being sent away. His was her own.

  During Kee Granny’s Month of the Green Corn Moon, winds, stronger and colder than usual for June, had whistled through Boone Station’s cracked walls the mineshafts created with each collapse. Once the earth chose to fill its inner cavities, there seemed to be no stopping it. Rumble after rumble echoed through dips along Turtleback Mountain. Clouds wreathed its top, hiding any change the Turtleback might reveal to those in the valley.

  First, Anna’s grave sank deeper. Then Old Man Farley’s shed gave way. And the structure Uriah Parsons built generations ago, Lily’s Boone Station, now wavered. Lily questioned which would be easier: leave Turtleback Mountain for Covington or fall asleep one night knowing she, too, would be buried in a mineshaft before the sun rose.

  A rumble awoke her during the night of another rainstorm. Eli had been gone these two months. The sun rose sporting a brilliant gold crown, taking with it fog and shadows. Another rolling sound, closer than the night before. Lily knew it wasn’t thunder. Living years between sun and shadow had taught her that thunder avoids the sun. It was growing up the Cherokee way with Kee Granny. It was living in a world made gentle by the presence of Eli O’Mary.

  When she opened the door to the front porch, Sunday scurried past her leg and darted under the iron frame bed. Sunday had been curled in a mound in the porch chair asleep. Just out from the house, what had been the empty mining road was now a broad strip of black gully, half the ground between house and mountain gone, the gap’s rim made soggy and mud-like by heavy rain.

  Lily stood on the edge of what had been her mother’s grave, opened again. Fifteen feet below, the coffin rested on its head. Wiry roots stripped white by the sucking shaft stuck out of the dirt like paralyzed worms. Anna’s coffin had been broken by the drop. The quilt pattern showed the color of dingy walnut stain made smooth, almost shiny, by the weight of brown dirt. The fruit jar identifying her mother lay cracked, crushed by a fist-sized lump of coal so luminous it glowed against the glass.

  At the opposite end of the gash near the house, another section of timbers gave way. Earth slid in on itself, dragging a new oak with it, leaving its branches hanging upside down against the far wall. Another such section and the house would go. A second cave-in above where her mother’s grave had been c
ollapsed, and what seemed to be half the mine, lay exposed. It was as if the land, as it dropped, was pulling itself from under her as she stood barefoot on the rim. All that had held her to the mountain was sliding into Turtleback Mountain. Lily called for Sunday. The time had come.

  Lily gathered her chickens and put them in a wooden crate. She washed thick dust off her Red Ryder wagon and tied on the crate. She secured a loose rope around Gertie’s neck. She and Sunday carried her animals down Turtleback and freed them in Juanita White’s fenced yard. She had not called Juanita. Lily’s faith in the camp woman told her Juanita would understand that Lily had gone.

  On the return walk, Lily and Sunday veered off the road and up to Flatland. They stepped around the charred fir barrier and passed what remained of Kee Granny’s church. What had been Briar’s log cabin stood, though smoke had darkened its outer wood. Near the stream, Lily found the bees intact. She bent before a box and whispered. “Queen Mother, Sunday and I are leaving Turtleback.”

  The bees hummed.

  “Our reunion will be a splendid celebration,” she said.

  Sunday followed Lily as they climbed to Kee Granny’s sacred cedar. Lily was certain it lived. The last time she had seen it, the cedar had become a glorious tree, filled with nests and surrounded by nourishing needles. She knew this, but she needed to see again what had been one of Kee Granny’s most stinging lies. Lily saw the top of the cedar well before she arrived on the ridge. As she neared the tree, she widened her stride. Sunday had to trot to maintain Lily’s pace.

  The cedar was as beautiful as she had remembered. She sat away from the branches so she could view the tree in its entirety while she rested. The ground was soft. What spring had not touched at Boone Station had obviously settled here. Between Lily and the cedar, supple dirt had allowed new life to push aside, creating space for small blades and budding leaves of green to poke through.