Thereafter the boy had another job in addition to that of interpreter, and another name to go with it: “Doc.”
Serving as Dr. Warren’s assistant when needed not only relieved the monotony of the march for the boy, it was a recovery of the self that had been taken from him. He was doing again what he had done with his father. He regained a sense of purpose and usefulness. He enjoyed making himself helpful to people in pain, and the satisfaction of their praise and thanks. He welcomed the responsibility. He familiarized himself so thoroughly with the inventory of the dispensary that he was able to fetch whatever the doctor required.
They had been on the road for just under a month and were somewhere in Tennessee when something happened one day up at the head of the line to stall the march. The question—what was it?—was relayed. The answer was a long time in getting back to those as far in the rear as the Fergusons. At the side of the road had been found the graves of a family of Cherokees, father, mother and daughter, casualties of an earlier emigration. It was what all had been dreading and none dared speak of.
When his turn came to pass the spot, Noquisi saw that the family’s name, burned, along with their familiar names and that of their clan in Sequoyah’s alphabet, into the wooden crosses marking their graves, was Grant. He dared not speculate on what it might have been that had wiped out a family at a stroke. Grant: he could recall knowing no one of that name, yet it was one that seemed to have a significance for him.
Three days later, and just twenty miles farther along the way from the site of the first ones, two more Cherokee graves were found at the side of the road. The victims here had been unrelated.
Then a week later came Beesville, where the message relayed rearward from the head of the march coursed through the column like a shudder down a person’s spine.
Beesville? Yes, said the owner of the Cherokee Trail Motor Lodge and Trading Post, whose overnight guest I, Amos Smith IV, had been, he knew the place. It was about a hundred miles up the road. Why?
I was his only guest, and, being otherwise unoccupied, after frying my bacon and eggs and dishing them up, he had seated himself, uninvited, at my table. Looking at the showcases around the walls while waiting for my breakfast, I had been reflecting upon the revolution in Indian trade goods. Nowadays it was they who sold trinkets to the whites: Navaho earrings, Cherokee beaded belts, Cheyenne feathered warbonnets, tom-toms of no known tribal design.
There was something in Beesville I wanted to see. Was there a decent place to put up there?
“Tex,” said my host (he had seen my auto license plate), “there ain’t nothing to see in Beesville. Blink as you pass through and you’ll miss it. No, sir, there ain’t no decent place to put up at, nor even an indecent one—reason being there’s no reason why anybody in his right mind would want to stay overnight there. This here is a one-horse town, but at least it’s got both ends of the horse.”
But there was something to see in Beesville, or its environs, and I had a map to it. It was a hand-drawn map on U.S. Army stationery, stained, faded and creased, giving the location I sought to the minute of latitude and longitude, for it designated the site of something that had happened long before Beesville was there as a reference point. It was one of three such maps I had, handed down through four generations of us Smiths.
Although the road was a good one, those were one hundred and more miles of sheer mountain climbing. It was a hot day and three times my laboring car overheated and had to be rested. But notwithstanding these stops, plus one for a leisurely lunch and another for a service-station rest room (thinking the while of doing what I was doing in public view, when the urge was not to be denied and there was not so much as a bush to hide behind, telling yourself that it was only human, when that was what it was not, it was animal: a memory of humiliation and shame that had lasted my namesake into his deep old age), I still made it to Beesville by midafternoon. I tried to imagine what it had been like to do it on foot and in the cold of one of the worst winters ever before or in all the many years since.
Their party of just under a thousand was now following several days behind another one the size of theirs. In the personal possessions they found abandoned and scattered all along it there was evidence that the road had been wearisome enough for the earlier travelers; for those who came after, it was the worse for their passage. In dry weather all those feet, hooves, wheels churned it into a choking dust, in wet weather into a quagmire—at times they struggled on the sticky road like flies on a strip of flypaper—and when sunny or frosty weather followed wet, into hardened furrows like plowed land. Bare feet and feet shod only in thin-soled moccasins were bruised and torn. It was hardest on those in the rear, the ones least able to keep up. They had to breathe the dust and slosh in the mud and stumble in the ruts of all those ahead of them.
It was as though the rain had been accumulating all through the months-long drought, for when it came it seemed that a dam had burst. In the beginning the emigrants permitted themselves the luxury of finding some stretches temporarily impassable, some weather unsuitable for travel, and camped to wait things out. The change that now came was one that made travel not easier, but harder, and yet imperative, for just as the drought was broken by torrents, so the long heat wave was broken by cold that corresponded in its severity. Now that road conditions were truly impossible and the weather worse than unfit, they must push on or perish. Ironically, they must hope for the cold to worsen. The freezing of the roadbed would ease travel.
As the sodden and shivering emigrant train toiled through the mire up one steep slope after another, the roadside crosses appeared with the frequency of mileage markers—with the difference that, unlike mileage markers, these spoke not of your getting nearer to your goal but of the lengthening odds against your ever reaching it. Meanwhile, Noquisi had his own reason for approaching each new one with dread. Though he had never known them, he had remembered who the Grants were.
They were an old mixed-blood family of considerable substance in their part of Georgia. They had been steadfast holdouts, supporters of Ross, opponents of Ridge. That the Grants had changed course, had decided that the cause was lost and the time had come to leave, had carried weight with Abel Ferguson. Such a big, such an unpopular, even heretical step it was that he contemplated taking, he argued with himself as to its rightness up to the end. The Grants’ going had been a factor in swaying him. They would be in the same wagon train.
Of his identification of the Grants as members of his parents’ party of emigrants, Noquisi said nothing to his grandparents. They had enough to worry them as it was.
But for him, Beesville, though no less of a shock—rather more—came not with the shock of complete surprise.
A century and a half later, just as the motel owner had said, there was nothing in Beesville to see. The site that I, Noquisi’s descendant, located was a bare plot of ground indistinguishable from its surroundings. There was no monument, no marker, no memory. The earth in its gyrations, the frosts, the rains, the snows, the winds of all those years had long ago tumbled down the wooden cross and plaque and leveled the shallow mound, hastily heaped up over a shallow pit hastily dug, by people hard-pressed and anxious to get away from this place of pestilence. But the meticulousness of Captain Donovan’s map left no doubt that I stood on or near the spot where my great-grandfather, as a boy, had stood and read, among the names of the fourteen buried in the mass grave, that of Anne Ferguson, his mother.
There was no time for him to mourn. That was an indulgence that would have to wait. The train was already in motion under a steady cold rain, and keeping up with it demanded all one’s strength of will. There was no time and there was no allowance. He had his duty the same as everyone to the spirit of the group. They were in this all together, one for all and all for one. He must not be the weak link in the chain. Most of the journey must be made knowing what he now knew, and he must act as though he did not know it. With apologies to his mother’s spirit and solemn promises to remem
ber her later, when this was over, Noquisi resolutely put her out of mind. Familiarity with death had toughened him, and that was as well, for he now had adult responsibilities. Nor must he live constantly in dread of having to ask Captain Donovan, somewhere farther along the trail, to draw him a second map. His father had never broken the news of his wife’s death to the family back home. Had that been to spare them? He had never written anything. Had that been to spare himself? Or had he never been given the chance? Of this also the boy must forbid himself to think. Because from now on his grandparents would often be entering his mind and reading his thoughts, and they must find him courageous, resolute. They would have need to draw upon all his courage, and more, for, despite his resolutions, that was not much. Grandmother, as he soon found, was already in need of borrowing some.
The door to Grandmother’s mind stood open as had that of her home to company. Now, as the Fergusons, restricted to her pace, slipped daily rearward in the march, Noquisi found in it two things: a determination to push on to the last footstep she had in her, and a conviction, enforced by this discovery of her daughter-in-law’s death, that she would not make it to the end of the trail. Ahead, at the side of the road down which her thoughts plodded, loomed a cross. Far off and small when first seen, it grew steadily larger. It neared even as her progress toward it on foot shortened by the day, as though she and it were both on the move, narrowing the distance that separated them. She faltered more and more frequently, but that marker in her mind now served as her incentive to rise and carry on. It stood awaiting her like a lover, arms outspread for the welcoming embrace. She joined in now with a fervor all her own to the words of the hymn, “O, Lamb of God, I come! I come!” This combination of frailty and spirit was an inspiration to those beside her, they marching reluctantly as before to their resting place, she now longingly to hers.
Now the train was being followed at a distance by a lone wagon. Its soldier-driver, a different one each day, made no attempt to catch up with the column: on the contrary, whenever there was any slowing of the main body, he slowed. When the day’s march ended and camp was made for the night, this wagon was not drawn up to join the rest but stayed back in its isolation. It was so far behind as to be almost out of sight, but it was almost never out of anyone’s mind. Only Dr. Warren went near it and he went several times a day. Otherwise not even the family members of its invisible occupant approached it. Though this wagon kept its place, stopping when all stopped, it followed when all moved on again as surely as a ball and chain. Its occupant was a young man with smallpox. The fear of one and all was deepened by their tribal sense. The blood that flowed in one flowed in everyone. They were the same in their susceptibilities.
On the fifth morning of his patient’s quarantine Dr. Warren sought and found the Reverend Mackenzie before the day’s march began. Noquisi saw the doctor give the Mackenzies that quick examination which he had seen his father give people whose appearance worried him. The one was as unsuited to this ordeal as the other. Outdoors work, manual labor from early youth, life as subsistence farmers had conditioned most of the Cherokees; not the Mackenzies. A bit of flower gardening was the extent of her work out of doors, and that was more than his. University studies and then composing and delivering sermons were what he had exerted himself on. They had their faith and dedication to draw upon, but while the spirit was willing the flesh was weak. Yet no one had even suggested that they take seats in a wagon, knowing they would refuse.
The doctor was about to make his morning visit to the patient in quarantine and he asked the Reverend Mackenzie to accompany him.
“I don’t know what we will find,” he said. “When I left him last night he was sinking. I’ve done all I know to do. It’s out of my hands now. The time has come for you to do your part. Prayer might help. It can’t hurt, can it?”
The patient was one of the Reverend Mackenzie’s converts.
“I’ll come too,” said Noquisi. “He won’t know what you’re saying without me.” What he was thinking was that without him to interpret God would not know what the man was saying with perhaps his last words.
The white doctor’s medicine was not working and the sick man’s family had taken matters into their own hands. While they squatted around a fire heating stones, the exorcist they had engaged was inside the wagon with the patient. The trials in the camp and on the road, and now the appearance among them of this dread disease, were turning The People back to their old ways and beliefs. They were moulting the civilization they had acquired with such effort. These here were mumbling prayers in Cherokee and in English—both broken, Noquisi noted. The Cherokee prayers were not addressed to God but to various pagan gods. They were Christians but they were also half-breeds, and in this dire circumstance they called upon both their resources as they employed their two hands at a task. One needed all the help one could get. “Thou shalt have no god before me”: to this they had subscribed. But it was not “before.” It was like a chief and his subchiefs. In case the headman was occupied with weightier matters than yours, you might get a hearing among the lesser ones. This was an attitude of mind that Noquisi understood because he shared it.
The patient was wrapped in his blanket with hot stones inside to sweat the evil spirits out of him. They were tenacious ones and the exorcist was obliged to use strong language on them and to menace them with shakes of his rattle. He paused in his work just long enough to assure his colleagues—or his competitors—through Noquisi that he had immunized himself by eating buzzard meat. As was well known, buzzards were immune to disease. Their foul odor kept evil spirits away.
The exorcist finished his operation and grunted with satisfaction at the result, or at the prospect of the result that might soon be expected. It was a look of some superiority that he bestowed upon Dr. Warren, whom he had been called in to relieve of the case, when he climbed down from the wagon. The Reverend Mackenzie, followed by Noquisi and the doctor, climbed in. The doctor signified by a look that the matter was indeed out of his hands now.
Even had there been time for it, the Reverend Mackenzie could see nothing to be gained by going through the Order for the Visitation of the Sick. His missal stayed in his pocket. What would it mean to this semisavage dying on the barrens of Kentucky to hear of the Holy Ghost, virgin birth, Pontius Pilate? Nor would he cheapen the solemnity of the moment with false assurances of recovery. In the little time he had he absolved the man and prepared him with a few words about the better life that would soon be his and the promise that he would be joined in eternity by his loved ones.
The man had reserved the strength for his last duty, to make peace with his fate. He said, “This is a good day to die.”
“Ai!” Noquisi wailed, and the family outside responded. It was a Cherokee farewell to the man, to let him know that he was mourned by those he was leaving behind. And though they were separated from the column, the boy heard the cry run its length like the calls of a flight of geese.
The dead man’s four survivors took it upon themselves voluntarily to march in the rear of the column and to camp alone at night. They segregated themselves so as to spare the rest fear of contagion from their nearness. They did it also out of shame at one of theirs having been the harbinger of trouble.
The detached wagon was rejoined with the others.
But it had been a fuse lighted at the end of the train. The spark had leapt the gap and spread through the line with the speed of fire.
Their oneness, the loss of their individuality, caught up as they were in the common plight, was nowhere more evident than in this: illness, when it struck, was instantly epidemic. Hard-driven, unrested, poorly fed, huddled together, exposed to harsh elements, inadequately clothed, all sharing the same conditions, as bound to one another as the pages of a book, they succumbed as one.
Still they pushed on, those unable to keep pace lying in wagon beds head to toe, to save space, like fish packed in crates. The outcries of the delirious sounded above the creaking of the wheels. Some
survived to tell of riding in length-long contact with bodies hot and thrashing with fever, then burning out and growing cold and stiff. To escape this, people kept marching until they collapsed in their tracks.
The cold winds whipped up and they fell like the leaves from trees. For protection against its bite and its chafing, Agiduda took grease from the axletrees and coated the family’s faces. Wagons were emptied of goods to make room for the invalids. At night they were emptied of their dead. Another inspection of them was made first thing in the morning. Before the day’s march got under way the burials were conducted. The Reverend Mackenzie read the service from his prayer book. For Noquisi the text was unnecessary. He had served as its interpreter so many times he now knew it by heart in both English and Cherokee.
Word of the contagion they carried ran ahead of them, and at the edges of towns and settlements they were met by armed bands who forced them to detour around. These men, determined by fear, stood their ground against mounted troops of the United States Army.
The Reverend Mackenzie tells of married couples being buried together and their orphaned children being adopted at the graveside, motherless infants put to other breasts. And the trek was resumed.
Noquisi—old Amos Smith I—would remember all his long life long this reversal in the normal order of things: how the grown-ups cried more than the children did. The ones cried because they could not restrain themselves, the others did not because the sight of their elders crying like little children struck dry-eyed terror to their souls.
Your tears at first were spontaneous, intermittent, personal. These were trivial tears, sentimental tears. The mindless marching in one set direction left your thoughts free to wander. They wandered toward what you knew. You remembered a favorite nook in the house where at a certain hour of the day the light fell with a special glow; a flowery path; the mouse you had trained to eat from your hand; the pleasure of sunny summer afternoons with you stretched out in the shade on the bank of the brook; the coming on of evening and the homeward lowing of the herd; you remembered wrapping the comforting darkness around you as you tucked yourself into bed at night. Then you were ashamed for your weakness in giving way to your feelings while others with as much to regret as you trod staunchly on.
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