by Vicki Lane
Then they had heard the roar of the great waterfall and, as they had rounded a curve in the path, they had seen the little cabin’s outline against the ghostly veil of falling water. The tiny windows had been dimly aglow with the light of the oil lamp Granny had left burning to guide Driver back home.
And Maythorn told Driver that she wanted to make a Booger mask so she wouldn’t be scared of someone—and Driver said he would help her.
“Mum, I’m glad I caught you. I’ve remembered something really important.” Rosemary’s breathless enthusiasm bubbled in Elizabeth’s ear. She listened apprehensively as her daughter detailed the elements of this new revelation, ending with a somewhat diffident note.
“But I called because I thought…Mum, do you think you could possibly go to Cherokee and try again to find Driver Blackfox? If he can remember the mask Maythorn made, it might tell us who she was afraid of. And if we knew that, it could get us closer to knowing what happened to her.”
Elizabeth glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty in the morning and a day’s worth of wreath-making ahead of her. Phillip had already left for school, and she had been on the way out the door when the phone rang.
“Today? Now? Why would I have any better luck at finding him than we did before?” And what makes you think that I’m sitting around like some unemployed private eye, just waiting for a call so I can spring into action? For god’s sake—
“Mum, I know you’re busy, but listen. I did a little online research and ended up phoning a gallery in Cherokee where Driver’s got a show right now. I talked to this woman and told her that I was doing an article on Cherokee artists and that I wanted to interview Driver Blackfox but had been having difficulty getting in touch with him. She was really nice and said that he was bad about returning calls or answering letters but that if I could get to Cherokee today, Driver would be at the gallery this afternoon.”
32.
TRUST TO LUCK…AND BEYOND
Tuesday, October 25
Reluctantly, Elizabeth had allowed herself to be convinced. Rosemary’s excitement was compelling. “And, Mum, you really ought to try going by the back way—I wish I’d thought of it earlier; it’s the way Driver took us the last time we went to visit Granny Thorn. You just go down Bear Tree and over Troublesome Gap to Spring Creek—really, Mum, I think you’ll love it. And call me tonight and let me know if you talk to Driver.”
The day was clear and cold as Elizabeth drove up Bear Tree Creek. Frost blanketed the fields still in shadow, and almost every little house was marked by a plume of white smoke. At the head of the creek she took the fork to follow the gravel road that wound high and steep toward Troublesome Gap. Rich brown leaves carpeted the woods, and the sun, winking through tree trunks and bare branches, highlighted the few trees whose red or yellow leaves had not yet bowed to the inevitable. Huge old rhododendrons, dark and wilted with the cold—leaves “querled” up, in the mountain dialect—clung to steep banks.
Higher and higher, surrounded by leafless trees she drove. Through a gap, she could see distant mountains, dark and hazy blue, stretching along the horizon. Above her, the sky was a perfect clear deep azure, and before her, newly fallen brown leaves lined the roadsides, leaving a narrow trail down the middle, making the gravel road seem no more than a footpath.
This is incredible—like going back centuries. I haven’t seen another vehicle since that one pickup back near the bridge. She was very near the top now. Tilted vertical outcroppings of rock loomed above the road; in the pervasive shade, icicles and wilted ferns clung to the folds of the boulders.
At the top of the mountain she stopped the car to enjoy the view. In the distance a grid of roads was sketched on a cleared mountainside, and farther down the road she could see a single car. A small litter of beer cans in the ditch revealed that others had paused here.
Oh, well, back to the present. Down and down, dodging in and out of shadows and sunlight that lay across the twisting road. Far below her lay Spring Creek, its houses and fields in the mountain’s shadow still heavy with frost. Two horses, little more than dark silhouettes against their silvered pasture, looked up as her car approached.
Close by the road rose an abandoned log cabin, the original edifice studded with additions from different periods—a frame addition to the front, a crude plywood enclosure scabbed on to the back. Sentinel pines stood in a line beside the old house, and across the road were a traditional corn crib and shed. Just beyond the house a log barn still stood, straight and true, though a plank addition sagged slightly. There’s a story there in that home place—probably spanning several generations. But now they’re all gone.
The somber thought was dispelled by the sight of a sheaf of orange-coral leaves illuminated by the sun, behind the dark loom of a huge poplar trunk. And now the woods gave way to fields, and before her were more and more houses in a broad valley and beautiful mountain slopes warmed by the sun and punctuated by globular green pines. Soon she was through Spring Creek and into Trust, a little handful of buildings that seemed to have been recently renovated: a general store, a large house with a well-maintained lawn, a gazebo, a chapel, a covered bridge: an immaculate little fantasyland amid the quiet surroundings.
Luck was next, another minuscule community, and Elizabeth smiled at the sign on a defunct grocery and feed store. Mr. Pink J. Plemmons’s store might be shuttered, but his name still endured, proudly blazoned in faded lettering on a sign that hung askew across the building’s façade. Till some antiques picker gets hold of it and sells it to a transplant to put on their living room wall because it’s “quaint.”
To her disappointment, she realized that the magical part of the journey was over, and she found herself on a busy highway, speeding through Junaluska, past Waynesville, and on to Cherokee. The odd feeling of having come in through a secret back door lingered—almost like L’Engle’s “tessering” through a wrinkle in time—but now the scenery was familiar: the same that she and Rosemary had passed not quite two weeks prior—except that now there was a snowmaking machine on the roadside in Maggie Valley, turning out a pathetic little slope of white granules for tourists to slide down on inflated rubber doughnuts.
Mystic Grounds, the coffee shop and gallery where Driver Blackfox’s work was on display, was an unexpectedly cosmopolitan little sanctuary in the midst of the tourist kitsch of Cherokee. Fancy coffees, quiche, and pain au chocolat were on the menu; Edith Piaf was followed by Tracy Chapman on the sound system. Elizabeth paused in the doorway, wondering if her quarry was on the premises.
A sign with an arrow directed her to the gallery—a spacious, windowless room. The first thing that met her eye was a carved mask, painted a lurid blue and surmounted with a stiff fringe of flame-colored hair. Beneath it, she was delighted to see, was an artist’s statement and a picture of Driver Blackfox.
A handsome, chiseled face with a somber expression looked out from the color photograph. He still has the long braids Birdie mentioned but, like mine, they’re not as dark as they used to be. The artist’s statement was brief. It mentioned Blackfox’s commitment to Cherokee themes, his fascination with animal totems and spirit guides, and his longtime interest in mask-making.
Elizabeth made her way around the room, studying each piece. Superbly carved animals rendered in wood or stone were displayed on log pedestals. A life-sized Great Horned Owl with outstretched wings dominated the display, flanked by smaller works of various birds and beasts. Masks lined the walls, some carved and painted, others constructed from gourds. Many depicted animal heads: a realistic bear with mouth opened in a red snarl; a demure raccoon; a comic possum, with pointed, grinning snout and tiny sharp teeth. Others were human, with exaggerated features. These have got to be caricatures: doesn’t that one look like Rush Limbaugh? And that’s got to be—
“Sometimes people from outside see these masks and think Blackfox is abandoning Cherokee themes. Actually, they’re just the latest expression of a very old tradition that he’s keeping alive.”
>
A dark-skinned young woman was standing in the doorway. Her paint-daubed jeans and shirt suggested that she, too, was an artist. She looked closely at Elizabeth.
“I thought maybe you were the one who called, the one who was doing an article on artists from the Boundary. But I had the impression she was younger….”
“You spoke with my daughter; we’re working on the piece together.” Elizabeth pulled her reading glasses from her pocket and put them on, in a feeble attempt to look like someone who would write an article. “My daughter wasn’t able to get away, so I came. Do you expect Mr. Blackfox soon?”
The young woman looked abashed. “Well, that’s the problem. Right after I talked to your daughter, Driver came in and took care of the stuff he was going to do this afternoon. He said he had an important client coming to talk to him about a big commission.”
“Will he be back later?”
“Afraid not. He said he was having lunch with the client at the casino and that he had some other things to do after that.” A frown wrinkled the young woman’s smooth forehead. “Did you make a special trip? I’m sorry.”
Her face brightened. “But if you went to the casino, maybe you could catch him there. I think he said he was meeting the client at one.”
33.
AT THE MOUSE HOLE
Tuesday, October 25
The casino stretched out endlessly, row after row of slot machines and video poker games. Lights flashed and blinked, music blared, and the smoke of innumerable cigarettes spiraled like incense from myriad altars up to the massive exhaust fans. Elizabeth made her way down a row of machines, a stranger in a strange land. Disconcertingly, many of the gamblers seemed to be plugged in, a cord growing from chest to machine as if for intravenous feeding or some electronic life support.
At first the players seemed to her to be all alike: mindless automatons feeding money into mindless automatons. Soon, however, she began to pick out individuals and relish their particular idiosyncrasies. A tiny old woman, evidently toothless, judging from the set of her tight-lipped jaw, was nodding and bouncing to the driving rhythm of the relentlessly upbeat music as one hand punched the buttons before her in perfect time. Beyond her, a matron with tight-curled iron gray hair rode her tall chair with insouciant ease, one foot propped up on a steel tray, the receptacle into which the machine would, with luck, disgorge its bounty of nickels. At her side, a neglected cigarette smoldered in a black plastic ashtray.
Elizabeth picked her way through the rapt gamblers, heading for the offices at the back, where she had been told she would find Driver Blackfox. Suddenly a siren whooped. She looked back to see a thirty-something woman with dirty blond hair, tight white slacks, and a cigarette dangling from her lips executing a slow, hip-swiveling, triumphal dance in the aisle by her machine. The beacon light atop the machine was proclaiming a win that could not be satisfied by rattling coins, and a uniformed attendant was hurrying to make the payout.
Other players looked up briefly, then resumed their methodical feeding of the machines. A tall man came striding down the lane, looking for an unoccupied seat. He brushed past Elizabeth and made for a vacant, flashing monster.
Okay, he gets the prize. Elizabeth tried not to stare, but the man was already attached to his machine and oblivious to her. A little embarrassed, she yielded to curiosity and studied the newcomer carefully, absorbing every detail of his outfit—fur-lined boots, very short cutoff jeans with slits reaching precariously high, an open denim vest, and a large gold medallion, prominently displayed on his bare chest. His confidence in his fashion statement was clear, but with his long white hair and beard, the latter slightly yellowed about the mouth, he looked like nothing so much as a Santa gone very wrong indeed.
At last she came to the hallway at the back of the main gaming room. It was marked NO ADMITTANCE, but the helpful woman at Mystic Grounds had told her that if she waited there, she couldn’t fail to intercept Driver Blackfox.
I hope she knew what she was talking about. Elizabeth took up her station, just to the right of the hallway. Like a cat at a mouse hole.
Or one of the damned in Dante’s inferno. Twenty minutes of waiting: being bombarded by flashing lights, bells, buzzers, the rattle of coins in the metal trays, and the occasional siren for the large wins, as well as the pervasive cigarette smoke. Elizabeth had a growing suspicion that somewhere back at the coffeehouse, two Cherokee artists were having a good laugh at her expense.
She was watching a woman near her light her fifth cigarette, oblivious of the four still smoldering in an overflowing ashtray. The woman, eyes locked on the ever-changing display in front of her, exhaled jets of smoke from her nostrils.
“I can’t promise it any sooner than June.”
“We can live with that—I don’t think we’ll have the site ready much before June, anyway.”
The voices were almost beside her, and Elizabeth hastily looked around to see the man she had been waiting for.
Driver Blackfox was even handsomer than his photograph—slim and athletic, he had avoided the paunchiness that was the curse of so many of his fellow tribesmen. He wore faded jeans and a neatly pressed white dress shirt. His braids were iron gray, and the aquiline severity of his copper-hued face was softened by the faint tracery of laugh lines around his dark eyes.
The two men stood, exchanging a few more words, while Elizabeth feigned interest in the smoking woman’s play.
At last good-byes were said, and to her great relief, the client—supremely uninteresting: smallish, pinkish, with what was either a bad toupee or a terrible haircut—returned to the inner sanctum and Driver started for the exit. He strode rapidly away, gliding down the rows of slot machines as if along a deserted woodland path. Elizabeth hurried after him, not wanting to accost him here, doubting that she could make herself understood in the heart of this buzzing, whirring, dinging, sparking bedlam, but determined to keep him in sight.
At last Driver was at the main entrance, flashing a brilliant smile and nodding to the two pretty Cherokee women stationed there to greet the patrons. He pushed through the doors and started for the parking lot.
“Mr. Blackfox!” Elizabeth dashed through the door. “Mr. Blackfox, can I speak to you for a minute?”
To her immense relief, Driver Blackfox turned to look at her. “Mr. Blackfox, I’m Elizabeth Goodweather…Rosie’s mother. You knew Rosie—she was Maythorn’s friend.”
Explanations, apologies, more explanations. Driver Blackfox stood as still and inscrutable as one of his own carvings as Elizabeth told him about Rosemary’s belief that she could solve the mystery of her friend’s disappearance.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but Rosie’s convinced herself that Maythorn wants her to do this. It’s become almost an obsession—maybe that’s too strong—but I don’t know what else to call it.”
Maythorn’s uncle said nothing. Instead, he began to walk toward a nearby section of the huge parking lot. Elizabeth kept up with him.
“Rosie had just one thing she wanted to ask you. It was about the booger mask you were helping Maythorn make. Rosie—”
He didn’t slow his long-legged stride but he did break his silence. “What does Rosie know about booger masks?”
“She knows that Maythorn was making a mask to represent someone who scared her. Kind of like your Rush Limbaugh mask. Or the one of the President.”
“Yeah, they scare me, all right.” His eyes twinkled, but his mouth remained stern. He stopped at the side of a worn old pickup.
“So, do you remember what the mask Maythorn made looked like? It would be such a help….”
Her heart sank. Driver Blackfox was climbing into his truck. He was turning the key in the ignition and the truck was roaring to coughing, sputtering life. Laboriously he cranked down the clouded window and began to back the truck out.
Elizabeth stood there, bitter disappointment sweeping over her. With a grinding and clashing of gears, Driver forced the old truck into low. Just before he r
eleased the clutch, he put his head to the window, leaning toward her. “Maythorn didn’t make a booger mask. She made two.”
HUNTERS’ MOON
September 1986
AS THE FULL moon’s glowing disk slowly came into view behind the peaks and gables of Mullmore, its cold light bathed the watching face of the girl in the gazebo. Maythorn Mullins watched, motionless, as the great orange ball gradually struggled free of the mansion’s silhouette to begin a stately ascent into the velvet sky. At last she nodded. Now, now was the time to finish it—now when the magic would be strongest.
Below her, the big house pulsed with light and hummed with a crazy confusion of sound—talk, music, the rhythmic clatter of tap shoes, gunfire, and the squeal of tires in a car chase emanated from various rooms as Mullmore’s other inhabitants pursued their chosen entertainments.
Silently, Maythorn counted them off on her fingers: Krystalle was perfecting her Tap ’n’ Twirl routine under the critical eye of her mother; Moon was in his den watching Beverly Hills Cop; and Jared and Mike were in the great room, where the television was tuned to some scary movie. In the kitchen wing, where the cook and her husband—the houseman—were cleaning up, a radio added its voice to the others.
Standing alone in the gazebo, Maythorn stared down at the house. A cold breeze herded a rustling flock of dry leaves across the wooden floor and around her running shoes. She pulled her jacket closer to her thin frame and shivered. The house looked so warm. Kids at school envied her for what they thought was a perfect life. When the class had come out for a picnic and a swim party at the end of school last year, she had seen how everyone had looked around. All at once, girls who had made fun of her long braids and dusky skin now wanted to be friends. And even Brian, who had whispered “Red nigger” whenever she passed by him…even Brian had been nicer to her since the picnic.