On her fifteenth day back at the clinic, Jamie went to work as usual. The waiting room was full by ten minutes after eight and she was going from one exam room to the next without stopping.
She walked into exam room three at two that afternoon. Lela sat by the exam table holding Darma’s hand. The little girl looked up at Jamie, but her eyes were calm. Stacie had already started the oxygen and treatment.
Jamie walked over to the table and looked into Darma’s eyes.
“I know you saw Tommy,” Darma said, never leaving Jamie’s eyes. “I know you lost him.”
“She says stuff all the time,” Lela said. “We don’t know what she’s talking about.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie said to Lela. She turned back to Darma. “Yes, I lost him,” she said. “Do you know how I can get him back?”
“The dream weaver,” Darma said. She sat up and grabbed Jamie’s arm. “He can get you back.”
“Who’s the dream weaver?” Jamie asked her.
“Blackbird. He lives in the clouds,” Darma said. She fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Blackbird,” she said.
Jamie was going to get nothing more out of Darma. She leaned close to the little girl’s ear. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“She’s going to be fine,” Jamie said to Lela. “I know these asthma episodes are traumatic for Darma and for you. But she’d going to be all right.”
Lela looked at Jamie. “Thank you,” she said.
“I’d like to come to your house later to check on Darma and talk to you, if that’s all right,” Jamie said.
Lela nodded. “Do you know where we live?”
“Not really. Can you give me directions?”
Lela told Jamie the way down the main road, and then a complicated series of roads and turns up into the hills. Jamie wrote it all down on her pad.
“I’ll see you later,” she told Lela. “Try not to worry too much.”
Jamie couldn’t wait for the day to end so she could go see Darma again. She didn’t think the little girl could tell her anything else, but Lela might be able to. Jamie was counting on that.
At six, Jamie took off her white coat and hung it in the closet in the supply room. She ran out the door and started down the road to Darma’s house. She turned off the main road and stopped in the road. No one was behind her. She looked at the directions she had written down. Go about a mile, then take the road to the right. Jamie drove and about a mile later, saw a dirt road on the right. She turned. She stopped frequently on her journey to check her directions. She took a wrong turn at one point, but found her way back and took the right road. At least, she hoped it was the right road.
On the last leg of her trip, she turned left onto a dirt road. There was nowhere else to go. This had to be it. The woods were thick on either side of the road and it was hard to see the sun. After about a mile on that road, she came to a clearing. The afternoon sun shone down onto a cabin and a garden area. Corn stood tall, reaching for the light. Jamie got out of her car and walked up to the cabin.
Lela opened the door before she got there.
“How’s Darma?” Jamie asked.
“She’s doing fine now,” Lela said. Jamie followed Lela inside the little cabin. A stacked rock fireplace was in the middle of the room, dividing the living room and kitchen. It was dark. Several fans were placed strategically around the room, blowing warm air. There didn’t seem to be any air conditioning.
Darma was sitting on the floor watching “Sesame Street.”
“Hey, Darma,” Jamie said. She walked over to the girl who was looking up at her. “Is it okay if I check your chest?”
Darma nodded. Jamie sat on the floor beside the little girl and put her stethoscope to her chest. It sounded good and clear. She checked Darma’s pulse, which was normal.
“It’s looking good, Darma,” she said. Darma had already turned back to the TV.
Lela was sitting on the couch and Jamie sat beside her. “Lela, Darma has said some things to me that are meaningful,” she said.
“She’s always saying stuff,” Lela said. “My husband says her ancestors are speaking to her. I hope he’s right.”
“I’ve been through some strange times,” Jamie said. “Darma seems to know about that. She’s told me I need to go see someone named Blackbird in the clouds.”
The door opened then and a tall Native American man stepped into the room.
“Dr. Walters, this is my husband, Chancy,” Lela said.
Jamie shook his hand. He was a handsome man with sleek black hair that came to his collar.
“Dr. Walters is asking about someone named Blackbird who lives in the clouds,” Lela said to her husband. “Darma told her about him. Do you know what she’s talking about?”
Chancy walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He looked at Jamie. “You want a beer?” he said.
“I think I do,” Jamie said. She needed a beer to clear the dusty dirt from her throat.
Chancy brought her the beer, which he had opened in the kitchen.
“It’s been a long time,” Chancy said taking a swig of beer. “But I remember someone name Blackbird when I was a child in the mountains. I remember my aunt and mother talking about him. I think he was very old.”
“Do you know how I can go and see him?” Jamie asked. She hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.
“He might be dead,” Chancy said. “I think he was old when my mother was a child.”
“Can you help me find him?” Jamie said. “I really need to find him. I’ll pay you to take me there.”
Chancy looked hard at Jamie then. “You say Darma mentioned him to you?” he asked.
“Yes. Darma knows things about me that she couldn’t possibly know. She told me I need to see Blackbird. The dream weaver.”
“Drama talks to the ancestors,” Chancy said. “I believe what you are saying. Let me think for a few minutes.”
Chancy got up from the couch with his beer and walked outside.
“He’s going to think,” Lela said. “That’s what he does when he needs to clear his head.”
Jamie and Lela watched Big Bird and Ernie for a few minutes. Jamie was on pins and needles waiting for Chancy to come back in. But she had to wait.
After what seemed like an eternity, Chancy walked back inside. His beer bottle was empty. Jamie looked up at him with expectancy.
“I think I might be able to help you,” he said. “We’ve got to go see my grandmother. She lives in the clouds with my mother. If anyone knows about Blackbird, she will.”
“When can you go?” Jamie asked. “We can take my car.”
“I can go on Saturday,” Chancy said. It was Thursday, but Jamie had no choice but to wait on Chancy.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll come pick you up. What time?”
“Nine should be good,” he said. Jamie shook his hand and headed toward the door. As she was walking out onto the porch, Darma called after her. “Tommy’s waiting,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
Jamie could barely concentrate on her job at the clinic on Friday. Nate asked her more than once if she was all right. “Just tired,” she told him.
“If you want to go back to Buddy’s ever, I’m game,” he said. Jamie realized that she could probably get something going with Nate in this timeline, maybe even get engaged to him again. But that was not her goal.
She slept fitfully Friday night, then drifted off about five. She woke up with a start at seven fifty. She was going to be late. She washed her face and brushed her teeth and put on jeans and a green cotton top. She rushed out her front door and got in her car.
She navigated the roads to Lela’s cabin more easily and didn’t get lost. She pulled up into the dirt drive right at nine. Chancy was sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette. He stubbed it out in the yard and walked over to her.
“I was thinking you could drive,” Jamie said. “Since you know where we’re going. Besides, I’m a little nervous.”
“No problem,” Chancy said. He opened the cabin door. “We’re gone, Lela. Bye bye, Darma.” He shut the door and walked to Jamie’s car. She handed him the keys.
“It’s going to take a couple of hours to get there,” Chancy said.
They drove north, up and up into the misty mountains. Jamie asked Chancy about Darma and her asthma and Darma and her visions.
“The asthma’s hard on us,” he said. “We love Darma so much, it hurts to see her struggling to get her breath.”
“I know,” Jamie said.
“It seems like she has her visions around the time she has asthma attacks. I don’t know why. But as soon as she could talk, she started saying things. My mother said she’s talking to the ancestors. I’ve decided that’s true.”
Chancy’s Native American culture was one that Jamie knew little about, even though she was one-quarter Native herself. She had grown up separated from her culture. Her mother had met her father in North Carolina, where she had grown up, and she had moved with him to his land in Tennessee. Jamie wished now that she knew more about her heritage.
Chancy drove until they had crossed the Tennessee line into North Carolina. The atmosphere had taken on a decided hazy feel. Chancy drove down back roads, turning this way and that, until he finally stopped at a cabin.
“This is where my mother and grandmother live,” he said. He got out of the car and she followed him up to the cabin door. Chancy opened the door without knocking.
A Native woman about her mother’s age looked up from the stove. “Chancy!” she said. She walked over to him and hugged him. A mother’s love never ended, no matter how old a child got to be. No matter how far away they moved.
“Where’s Grandma?” Chancy asked. “We’re trying to find Blackbird. I figure she knows where to go.”
“She’s in the bed,” Chancy’s mother said. “She’s feeling very tired these days. But you can go back and talk to her.”
Chancy’s mother followed Chancy and Jamie into a small room. An old woman lay back in the bed, propped up on several pillows. She was watching a tiny black and white TV. When she saw Chancy, her face broke into a huge smile and she held out her arms. Chancy gave her a hug.
“Grandma, this is Dr. Walters,” he said. “She’s trying to find Blackbird.”
“Oh,” Grandma said. “I haven’t heard that name in a while.”
“Is he still living?” Chancy said. Jamie hoped so with everything in her being.
“I haven’t heard that he died,” Grandma said. “If he’s still alive, he is very old.”
“Can you tell me where he lives?” Chancy asked.
“I can tell you where he used to be, the last time I saw him. That was a very long time ago, when your grandfather died. You weren’t born yet,” she said.
Chancy sat on the edge of his grandmother’s bed and she told him the way to Blackbird. Jamie couldn’t really hear them very well. Chancy kept nodding as his grandmother talked. When she stopped talking, he stood up.
“I’ll see you soon, Grandma,” Chancy said leaning down to give her a kiss.
“Good luck, grandson. And good luck to you,” she said looking at Jamie.
“Thanks,” she said. “I need it.”
They walked back through the kitchen. “Mama, I’ll see you soon,” Chancy said, giving her a hug. They got back in Jamie’s car and Chancy drove for a few minutes, taking several turns. And then he pulled the car over to the side of the dirt road.
“We’ve got to walk from here,” he said. Jamie got out of the passenger side and walked over to Chancy. He was at the edge of the woods. “It’s this way,” he said. Jamie couldn’t see anything but trees, one of them a large oak, but she followed Chancy into the woods. She couldn’t see any kind of path, but Chancy could somehow.
“I used to come here when I was growing up. I didn’t realize Blackbird was living up there in the woods. I would go all the way in until I saw a cabin, but that’s as far as I ever went. I didn’t know who lived there.”
Chancy walked and held aside branches for her when they leaped out. They walked for fifteen minutes and Jamie was beginning to wonder if Chancy really knew where he was going, if they were lost in those woods.
“We’re here,” Chancy said. Jamie looked around and it took her a moment to distinguish a cabin in the thick woods. It was buried deep. There was a feeling of silence coming from the cabin as they walked up to it.
Chancy knocked on the weathered door. Jamie stood beside him and felt like she might faint. Blackbird had to be there, had to be alive. If he wasn’t, she had no more hope for returning to Tommy.
They stood there for a minute or so. Chancy looked at Jamie. He knocked again and was reaching his hand for the rusty doorknob when the door opened. A Native man with wrinkles on his face like folded parchment stared at them. His hair was white and braided in a long braid that reached his waist. He was wearing a plaid shirt and faded blue jeans. The old man looked at them with brown eyes that passed through her soul.
“Blackbird?” Chancy said.
The old man gave the slightest of nods to Chancy. He opened the front door and walked into the cabin. Chancy and Jamie looked at each other, then followed Blackbird into his cabin. It was one room. There were two chairs in front of a small fireplace. There was no couch. A bed was on the furthest wall and it was covered in blankets. There was an area that looked like it might serve as a kitchen, with a tiny sink and countertop. Jamie didn’t see a refrigerator.
“Sit,” Blackbird said to Jamie, motioning to a worn rug on the floor. It looked like it had some sort of zigzag pattern, but it was so faded it was hard to distinguish. The color seemed to be a worn red, but Jamie couldn’t say for sure. “Sit.” He looked at Chancy. “You wait outside,” he said, pointing at the door. Chancy hesitated.
“It’s all right,” Jamie told him. “I’ll be fine. Do you mind waiting?”
Chancy shook his head. He smiled at Jamie for the first time on that strange trip. “I’ll be out there,” he said.
Jamie sat on the rug and Blackbird sat down in front of her. She couldn’t believe that the old man could still sit on the floor. But he did, and he seemed comfortable.
They looked at each other, Jamie and Blackbird. They gazed into each other’s eyes for longer than Jamie had ever looked into anyone’s eyes, but she wasn’t uncomfortable with it.
“The ancestors have sent you on a journey,” he said.
Jamie didn’t know how she had started her journey, but she nodded. “Yes,” she said. She looked over at the fireplace and noticed that a tiny fire burned there, with a cast iron pot hanging over it. It was blazing hot in the late summer, but the fire seemed contained with its own heat.
Blackbird got up with amazing ease and walked to the fireplace. He took a pouch that was hanging on the bricks surrounding the fireplace and reached his hand in. He threw some of the contents into the pot. He stirred it with the wooden spoon that was already in the pot.
Jamie watched Blackbird and didn’t speak. After a moment, Blackbird reached for two cups on the crude mantle and dipped into the liquid. He carried a cup to Jamie, which she accepted from his gnarly hands. He sat back down in front of her with his own cup.
“Drink,” he said. Jamie drank. The warm liquid tasted like some kind of herbal tea. It was bitter but Jamie drank it down. She had no idea what it was, but she drank it anyway. Blackbird drank from his own cup. When Jamie was finished, she set the cup down beside her. Blackbird put his cup on the floor beside him. He looked into her eyes again and Jamie began to feel slightly dreamy. She couldn’t really describe the feeling very well, but she was relaxed and open. She didn’t question anything that was happening.
Blackbird sat before her and closed his eyes. Jamie’s eyes were half shut as she moved through the dream state.
“Your ancestors led you to a sacred place,” Blackbird said after a few minutes. “The Moon Cave. They have let you change time.”
Jamie’s eyes were shut th
en. “Yes,” she said. Blackbird threw something on the fire and it crackled and emitted an herbal-infused smoke.
“You go around and around. Like a jar of water that you shake,” Blackbird said. “The water is still there, but it’s in a different place after you shake it.”
Jamie heard Blackbird, but she was drifting in a place she had never been. A place of understanding.
“It is ruled by the full moon,” Blackbird said. “But it is unstable. You entered the dream world twice during your times there. Twice on a full moon, but you were not in the cave. Twice, you dreamed of the now time and twice you came back.”
Jamie opened her eyes and Blackbird was looking at her. “You must decide where you want to be. Then or now.”
“How do I do that?” Jamie asked.
“Go to the Moon Cave and bring me items from there. But it must be from the time you want to stay. If you go at the full moon, you will go back again. Gather the items from then, if that is your choice, and bring them to me. If you decide to stay in the now time, bring me the items from now.”
“What items?” Jamie asked. “What should I get?”
“Bring me a branch from the willow tree. The tree has memories. Bring me a jar of water from the lake. Bring me a jar of dirt from the Moon Cave. And bring me the writings on the cave wall.”
“Writings?” Jamie asked.
“There are Native writings on the ceiling. Write them down and bring them if you come back to me.”
Blackbird stopped talking and Jamie realized he was done. She got up from the floor and walked to the cabin door. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Tommy’s waiting,” Blackbird said.
Jamie stopped at the door and looked at Blackbird. “I know,” she said.
Chancy was sitting on the steps when Jamie walked out the door. Silently, she followed him to her car and got in the passenger side. Chancy drove out of the woods and down the cloudy mountains. Eventually, they got back to Chancy’s house. They had not spoken much on the drive.
“I want to pay you for helping me today,” Jamie said.
“No,” Chancy said. “I can’t accept payment.” Jamie realized that if she insisted on paying Chancy, it would be insulting to him.
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