Old Wounds

by Vicki Lane

  Her daughter’s lovely, long-fingered hand reached out and squeezed Elizabeth’s. “Oh, Mum, I don’t know why I even brought it up. It didn’t blight my childhood, or anything like that. But I had wondered. And thank you for answering my question.”

  Elizabeth stared out the window, her eyes brimming with tears, unable to trust herself to speak. They drove on in silence until, passing the turn to Newfound Gap, Rosemary pointed at the sign. “Look at that!” she exclaimed. “Newfound by who…whom?”

  “Excuse me?” Elizabeth came back to the present at the sound of her daughter’s voice. “What do you mean? I’ve always thought that was a kind of romantic name.”

  “No, I was remembering one time Maythorn’s uncle told us that name was a reminder of the arrogance of the white settlers—how they gave names to tracks and traces that already had names, names the Cherokee had given them. He told us that Newfound Gap had been used by Indians for thousands of years and to call it newfound was stupid—and disrespectful.”

  “You really loved going to Cherokee. I remember that first time, you came back with some kind of Indian bread you’d made and you couldn’t stop talking about all the things you’d learned. You never seemed to envy Maythorn the fancy house and all the money, but I remember your pa saying that we were a bitter disappointment to you in our lack of Native American blood.”

  “We went back a few more times, I think, but it’s the first visit I really remember. The last time was in the fall of ’86, just a few weeks before…” Rosemary’s hand sketched a small gesture, and she went on. “Anyway, it was always an amazing experience. Granny Thorn spoke mostly Cherokee and she lived in a little log house and she showed us how to cook Cherokee food and how to do Cherokee dances. I’m remembering more every minute.”

  “What about the uncle? Do you remember his name? Maybe we can find him if he’s still in Cherokee. Was he a doctor like Maythorn’s father?”

  Rosemary frowned. “No…I think he was an artist of some kind. He talked about making real Cherokee art and what he called phony Noble Savage stuff. He said tourists liked the phony stuff better.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “I didn’t, but Jared did. It was Driver Blackfox. I’m hoping we can find him and he can tell me about the Booger Dance—I keep remembering that phrase and somehow I think it’s important. And I’m almost sure it comes from that last weekend.”

  On they drove. As they neared Canton, the car plunged into mist again—man-made and foul-smelling this time, an ugly low-lying, murky haze.

  “What in god’s name…?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a paper mill.” Elizabeth rolled up her window. “I’ve heard that Canton residents say it just smells like money to them.”

  A stand of poplar trees, green leaves tarnished to brown, their edges crisped by frost. From their midst, cell towers bristled. A modest billboard set back in a pasture advertised Cherokee Tribal Bingo in blazing letters. Rosemary nodded toward it and made a face. “Yuck.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Sweetie, there’s worse to come. Did you know the tribe has a casino now? At long last, the Indians are scalping the white folks.”

  A pair of crosses and some faded artificial flowers, side by side on the shoulder, marked the site of a double traffic fatality…farther on, a simple white-painted wooden cross…and farther still, a cross of bleached-out plastic flowers, leaning drunkenly. Waynesville…Lake Junaluska…and then development run amok—tattoo parlors, pawn shops; “junque” barns; riding stables; Mom-and-Pop strip motels; home sites for sale; mountainsides covered with phony-looking log houses instead of trees; motel after motel; campgrounds; a rock shop, with a display of big chunks of brightly colored glittering pieces of glass, red, blue, green, purple, orange; Halloween harvest displays…

  Rosemary’s face was growing grimmer by the moment, and as they drew to a stop at a red light, she burst out, “This is…this is terrible! I don’t remember it being like this at all.” She looked from the sign urging her HAVE YOUR PICTURE MADE WITH A REAL MOONSHINE

  STILL! to a garish billboard for SANTALAND—THEME PARK

  AND ZOO.

  “Mum, what if Marshall County gets like this? Laurel and Ben mentioned that there’re lots of new people buying up buildings in Ransom and land all over the county. What if…?” She gestured wordlessly to the unlovely conglomeration of tourist traps.

  A nightmare vision of quaint, quiet Ransom, suddenly transformed into a tourist mecca filled Elizabeth’s mind. The prospect was unnerving. “Rosie, I don’t know.” Visions of herself with a shotgun, holding a developer’s bulldozer at bay, flitted through her thoughts.

  But as they left the gaudy jumble of the commercial strip and began to climb toward Cherokee on a winding road through undisturbed forests, both women relaxed. And by the time they saw the sign for the Cherokee Indian Reservation and the beautiful long views across wooded mountains, there was a powerful sense of coming to a hidden-away place…a Shangri-La. They began to see homes: modest houses and trailers. The side roads were marked with standard green street signs but—and Elizabeth felt a thrill as she noticed—the signs were in English and in the beautiful curling symbols of the Cherokee syllabary, the alphabet invented in the early 1800s by Sequoyah to give his people a written version of their language.

  Elizabeth motioned to one of the signs and Rosemary nodded happily. “I see, Mum. That’s so cool.”

  Deeper in, there were more and more homes, mostly modest brick ranches; a billboard: “TALK TO YOUR ELDERS ABOUT DIABETES” Cherokee Church of God (Pentacostal); trailers, campgrounds; three kettle-style barbecues and a cluster of lawn chairs outside one house, evoking an image of a cheerful family gathering; signs for the Wolfetown Community, Macedonia Baptist Church, Bigwitch Baptist Church, Hornbuckle Tree Farm….

  And then the tourist heart of Cherokee—Santaland, almost deserted at this hour, and a sudden shock as the Casino Hotel loomed ahead, at least three times taller than any other building in sight. Behind it, the casino itself, an odd building that managed to look like ancient Egypt rather than Cherokee, its huge parking lot stretching empty before it.

  “Only nine-thirty—it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like later in the day. You want to gamble, Rosie?” Elizabeth grinned at her daughter, trying to project an air of knowledgeable raffishness.

  “Have you ever been in one of those places?” Obviously Rosemary was not deceived. “I have, once when I was at a conference. Really awful—full of cigarette smoke and zombies. Somehow I don’t see you there. No, I thought we could start at the museum. That’s the first place Driver took us.”

  14.

  STONEWALLED

  Friday, October 14

  “Driver wanted to make sure we understood about the Trail of Tears and how many died on the Long Walk—that was the main thing.” Rosemary watched as her mother minutely examined the museum’s display re-creating a cozy Cherokee home of 1838. Its inhabitants could be glimpsed through a window at the rear, being led away by armed and menacing U.S. soldiers. The few bits of blue-and-white china on the table where a meal had been in progress seemed unbearably poignant.

  “Driver told us Granny Thorn’s people were some of those who hid from the army—hid for years and years till the government agreed to a reservation right here. And there were other Cherokee who were forced to walk all the way to Oklahoma, and then, when they could, they turned around and walked right back.”

  The recording that accompanied the exhibit had just finished the bleak tale—Cherokees torn from their homes and farms and forced onto the Long Walk to the inhospitable West, but still Elizabeth stared into the little room, saying nothing.

  “Mum?” Rosemary ventured. She was alarmed to see her mother’s blue eyes swimming with tears.

  “This just really gets to me—there they were, there they’d been for time out of mind, and all of a sudden white settlers want their land. The white soldiers cut down the Cherokee’s peach trees and burn th
eir corn….”

  Rosemary waited as Elizabeth scrabbled in her shoulder bag for a bandana, blew her nose vigorously, and went on. “But the thing of it is—the real thing—is that it’s always happening. Like the Cherokees probably displaced some earlier, weaker tribes who had beat up on someone before that. And back when we moved to Marshall County, the descendants of those same first settlers who had helped get rid of the Cherokee felt threatened by how many new people were moving to the county, new people with different ideas about how things should be run. And now I’m feeling threatened by the folks moving in with mega-bucks to spend and their own vision of what the county should be. Fancy summer homes, bigger and bigger…gated communities that say ‘us, not you.’”

  Mum’s really on a rant, Rosemary thought, eyeing her mother with incredulity. She hardly ever—

  “Not that I think these really rich people would want to turn Ridley and Marshall County into a tacky tourist trap like we just drove through. But I’m afraid it’ll be a tasteful one—you know, art galleries and spas and high-end crafts and places to eat with goat cheese and arugula.”

  She broke off and blew her nose again. “What a hypocrite I am. I love goat cheese and arugula. And I was thrilled when the deli opened up and there was a choice in Ransom other than burgers or meat and three. Ben and I had this conversation not long ago, and I was giving him all sorts of stuffy wisdom about change being part of life. I guess I’m just feeling endangered. Sorry, Rosie, I’ll get off it.”

  They passed through the remaining exhibits in silence. At this early hour, they had the museum almost entirely to themselves. As she moved from display to display, Rosemary felt the remembered presence of Maythorn and her uncle Driver. He was so passionate about their heritage. See and remember, Mary Thorn Blackfox, he’d said it over and over. See and remember. In her mind’s eye she saw him, a dark-skinned young man with long braids and glittering eyes, his strong hand gripping Maythorn’s thin shoulder as he directed her attention to one of the glass cases. See and remember.

  When they returned to the lobby, Elizabeth crossed to look at the artifacts and Indian crafts filling the showcases on the walls. Rosemary’s attention was drawn to a display of carved masks representing various animals—a long-beaked bird, a wolf, a bear. She studied them, frowning. These aren’t the kind I remember. I wonder…

  Leaving her mother rapt in contemplation of a display of basketry, Rosemary returned to the desk where they had purchased their tickets. Business was still slow and the two Cherokee men—one young, one white-haired—seated behind the desk were chatting leisurely.

  “Excuse me,” Rosemary said, as the younger man stood and came to the front, “I had a few questions. What can you tell me about the Booger Dance? Is it still performed?”

  The two men exchanged startled glances. The younger—“Wattie Calhoun” his name tag read—shook his head slowly. “No, not for a long time. It’s, you know, kind of…”

  “But I think I saw it when I was here nearly twenty years ago.” Rosemary persisted despite Wattie Calhoun’s clear discomfort with the subject. “Was it performed for tourists back then?”

  The older man said something in the strange, somehow halting tongue that she recognized from the recordings she had just heard in the museum as Cherokee. He was evidently teasing the younger man, for the latter’s olive complexion deepened several shades as he continued to shake his head. “No way they ever did the Man Dance for tourists. You remember wrong.”

  Now Rosemary was blushing. She remembered from her online research that the Booger Dance involved a certain amount of rowdy horseplay with water-filled gourds brandished like phalluses. And some of the masks were semi-obscene too. This poor guy, having to deal with Crazy White Woman Asks Indelicate Questions.

  Impulsively, she changed the subject. “My best friend’s uncle used to live here and I think he had something to do with the museum. I was hoping to get in touch with him again. His name is Driver Blackfox. Do you know him, by any chance?”

  Wattie Calhoun’s face went blank and the older man said something in rapid Cherokee. The younger man relaxed.

  “No, I can’t say as I know of any Driver Blackfox. Sorry.” He picked up a jumble of papers that lay on the desk before him and turned away from her. “Sorry, I can’t help you.” He muttered something to the old man, who rose and followed him through the door at the rear of the ticket office.

  “Rosie, look here!” Her mother’s voice was full of barely contained triumph. “Over here—these carvings!”

  The case was full of recent examples of Cherokee craft—intricately woven baskets of dyed river cane, and carvings in wood and soapstone. A graceful owl carved in some pale wood hovered, wings half-extended, over a sleeping fox executed in black walnut. Beside the pair a neatly lettered card read D. BLACKFOX——2002.

  “You said he was a woodcarver, didn’t you?” Her mother’s face glowed with excitement. “Let’s ask in the gift shop if this is Driver.”

  The women in the deserted gift shop brightened at the sight of potential customers. Elizabeth and Rosemary made a circuit of the store and Elizabeth became absorbed in the book section. With a surreptitious look at her oblivious parent, Rosemary picked up a very small, very expensive Cherokee basket, beautifully woven in intricate patterns with river cane, both natural and subtly dyed. I’ll give it to her as a thank you for helping me with this—what is it, a quest?

  Feeling that perhaps her purchases might buy her a little information as well, she handed the cashier her credit card. “I really love that carving out in the hall, the owl and the fox. Do you have any smaller things by Driver Blackfox for sale? The large pieces are way out of my price range.”

  The dark-eyed young woman laughed. “Sorry. We used to have a few, but he’s only doing big things now. You might find—”

  “Tla!” The older man from the ticket desk was standing behind her and staring fixedly at the three women behind the counter. He barked out a short sentence, then wheeled and stalked out of the shop. The three women looked at one another, and silent messages were exchanged without the flicker of an eyelid.

  “And sign this. Thank you so much.” The cashier thrust the credit card receipt at her. Before she handed it back, however, Rosemary tried once more. “Where did you say I could find more of Driver Blackfox’s work?”

  The young woman plucked the slip from Rosemary’s fingers. “Driver? Oh, I thought you said something else. I don’t know any Driver.” She pushed the bag with the little basket in it across the counter. “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

  “Okay, the people in the other gift shop were equally uncooperative. The woman at the cash register was putting down the telephone as I walked in and she stared at me with just a hint of a smirk, like she knew exactly what I was going to ask her. And what she was going to say. Talk about stonewalling.”

  Rosemary gave the steering wheel an annoyed jerk. “I wonder if it would be worthwhile going someplace official or if that wouldn’t do any good either.”

  Elizabeth looked up from the book on the history of the Eastern Band that had been her single purchase. “We could drive out to Big Cove and look for his house.”

  “Excuse me?” Rosemary stared at her mother, who was grinning madly now.

  “While you were getting stonewalled, I went and found a payphone. With a phone book.” Elizabeth pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. “There are a bunch of Blackfoxes, including a Dan, a Davy, a Doris and L.D., a D.G., and two plain Ds. But there is also, as big as life, a Driver on 538 Robert Junaluska Road in Big Cove. I have a phone number, but somehow I think we might do better to go unannounced.”

  Does it seem familiar? It took a long time to get to Maythorn’s granny’s house from the museum, I think I remember that much. The road was curling through woods and fields, at times along a broad, shallow creek, water racing over smooth rocks. They passed several campgrounds and homes set in clearings. Large gardens abounded. Rows of drying cornstalks stood sentinel,
pale crisp leaves fluttering like stiff flags in the autumn breeze.

  “This book I got about Cherokee says that Big Cove is the most remote and the most traditional of the various communities in the Qualla Boundary.” Her mother peered at her over the top of reading glasses. “What’s this up here?”

  They had come to a large open area. Tiny orange flags fluttered everywhere, marking off rectangles of various sizes, some of which were covered with canopies of bright blue plastic. Several utilitarian trailers sat at one end of the site and an assortment of cars and trucks lined the entry road. A large sign proclaimed that this was the future site of an educational complex.

  “I don’t see any construction going on. What do you suppose…?” Elizabeth craned her neck to see the activity as they passed.

  “I’ll bet it’s an archaeological dig—maybe one of the towns that was destroyed by the army when they forced the Cherokees out. Probably this whole place is full of history and they have to do a dig and study it before they can build over it.”

  Rosemary smiled to herself. There’s undoubtedly a metaphor to be made here, but with two English majors in the car, it’s also undoubtedly not necessary. She looked over at her mother, who returned her glance with a nod.

  “Exactly,” said her mother.

  They were deep into the Big Cove area when Elizabeth spotted the road they sought. A narrow, unpaved ribbon, it ran between tall trees and thick undergrowth. As they followed it, they passed a mailbox marked with the number 316. A modest brick house sat at the end of a long driveway. There were no cars and no sign of activity.