“Great Mother,” he said, “I have seen what the rubber has wrought and although I do not know how it is to be accomplished or assessed, I promise you there will be compensation.”
The woman pulled herself up from the throne by leaning on a thick staff whose finial was carved into the shape of a stag head and from which flowed leather ribbons decorated with many colored beads. He saw that one of her feet was swathed in bandages. It looked twice the size of the other. She waved the Cherokee men away, waited until they stood guarding the entrance to the cave with their backs to them before she spoke. The sound of her voice knocked the breath out of him.
“Why should I believe you, titmouse, whose words are as dried leaves in the wind?”
She removed her mask. It was Marian. Marian was alive. Abe fell to his knees and babbled his amazement and regret. He confessed his sins. He kissed the hem of her robe. He would never lie to her again.
Dark Water of the Mountains
Abe did not grovel long.
“Get on your feet, titmouse,” she said. There was warmth in her tone despite the insult of address. “I have no anger toward you at present. I’ve come to understand why you lied to me. You were trying to save me, were you not? From the pain of seeing what Jacob has become? So many people have lied to me about him. My father. My mother. Under their direction, my brother also. Everyone in this village has lied to me about Jacob. Why should you be any different? Come to me. We will go deeper into this cave. I would like to lean on you. I’ve grown weary of my staff.”
She put a hand on his shoulder, he put an arm around her waist. “Carry a torch,” she said. “We’ll need the light.” With his assistance, she hobbled down a corridor of sheer stone without the wooden reinforcements common to mines. Its formation was either natural or carved out so long ago it might as well have been. Under the glow of his torch, graceful images of deer, hawks, and rabbit appeared on the walls, then vanished into the dark as they passed. After a short time, they arrived at a new opening of the rock, this one much higher and broader than the room with the throne. A bench, a table, a raised wooden bed fashioned out of interlocking tree limbs much like the throne and topped by a down mattress, two wooden chests, a fire pit, which was alight and occupied with heating a caldron suspended from a metal rack over a low flame, a stack of bowls, and other utensils were positioned about. At one end, the rock face dropped sharply off into a gorge through which a spring ran, while overhead, the rock face soared. As it was night and the mist had settled over the mountain, Abe could not determine the height of the ceiling, but it seemed infinite, and appeared to have an opening, perhaps quite small, at its center. The smoke of the fire snaked toward it as if a draft pulled it there. He helped Marian to the bench, where she sat and leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her clasped hands supporting her chin.
“Come sit by me,” she said, “and I will tell you what happened to me. Were you distraught when I did not return to the cabin? Yes, of course you were. I wanted you to be. The English have a saying about hating the messenger who brings bad news. I hated you a little for telling me that Lulu was alive and lived in affection with Jacob at Chota. I hated you a little more when I found out it was not true. After everything I told you about how I loved him, why did you wish to hurt me with that news? It was a long time before I discovered the lie of it. Before that, I suffered.”
“Forgive me, Marian. I was jealous.”
She laughed. Her laughter echoed throughout the cave like a thousand bells chiming all at once. It mocked him.
“Really? Were you? I wonder if you can even know the meaning of the word. If for you jealousy was a race of mites beneath your skin, scratching at you until a bitter canker rose up on your tongue, for me it was an inferno that enflamed my very blood and consumed my senses. I was mad with it. I could not understand why Jacob had forsaken our vows to each other, that as long as we lived there should be the most sacred fidelity between us. From the day we first loved, no other man touched me until I was told he was dead, and after I thought him dead, throughout all the years since, what my body enjoyed, my heart ignored.”
Abe was taken aback. He, who had loved her devotedly, passionately, did not represent anything remotely similar to a violation of her vow in her mind. He was an inconsequential event to her, a means to an end, a convenience, a tool, and that was all. He realized he understood nothing of this woman and listened more closely, seeking answers to the riddle of Dark Water of the foothills.
“For days, I tore through the woods, wailing. Branches ripped my skin. Thorns caught in my hair and pulled it out without my notice. I frightened my horse. She fled from me. I had not mourned like this since the year after Billy Rupert was killed, when I thought Jacob had died in battle, when I mourned him as a woman does her husband. I did not wash. I let my hair hang loose. I did not change my dress and cared not what I ate or when. My tears were like acid. They burned my skin and made me blind.
“That was how I walked into the river that belonged to the Catawba people before the white man drove them out. I waded into the waters close to a place where the falls could hurtle me headlong into rock. I had no idea how close they were. I did not hear them. I could not see. To this day, I believe I did not wander into danger intentionally. But perhaps I did. Isn’t it more likely though that I only wanted the burning of my skin to be soothed? Who knows. The water was very cold, the currents were swift. After a time, my body went entirely numb. Without thinking, I gave myself to the river. I let myself drift in her arms, I don’t know how long. Sometimes, I lay flat in the water. Other times, I got turned all about, somersaulting past deadwood. My ribs cracked against both the riverbed and debris. It didn’t matter. I had given myself to the river. In my mind, I reached back to the time when Jacob and I were together and I floated there, as if in a dream, unaware of the present, unafraid of what came next. It was then I learned a most remarkable thing. The heart’s will to live can die but the body ever fights to survive.
“After a great tumble down a wall of water, I became stuck, I don’t know how. My foot wedged between two rocks, in a place close to the shoreline. For a while, the waters battered me back and forth like a reed in the wind. I swallowed much water. I coughed. I was nearly done for. I fell forward, ready to die, when a powerful spirit, dwelling until that time silent, watchful at the base of my lungs, leapt forth, roaring his refusal to succumb. Ai! I can still hear his voice shouting into the void! Suddenly, at his command, I ripped my foot from its stony trap, at the expense of much flesh and blood. I threw myself forward, landing on the riverbank. From there, I dragged myself into a cluster of huckleberry bushes, or perhaps that same spirit carried me, I cannot know today. And although it was long past the season for fruit—it was at the birth of winter, remember?—I watched, half-dead, astonished, as one of the bushes, a bush who had pity for me, suddenly bore fruit, pushing through its dead branches green leaves and clusters of beautiful, juicy berries, blue as the night sky. Giving thanks, I ate mouthful after miraculous mouthful, gaining strength until I could get myself, somehow, by another miracle or else I don’t know how, to the boundaries of the old trade path. Then the fourth miracle. Four is a sacred number for us, did you know that? I should have expected something magical to happen next. And this is it: by the grace of Mother Moon, certain Cherokee found me that night and brought me here, to my brother, for healing. The people exulted, for they have always loved me, and put me here, in a cave of the ancients, to recover. Waking Rabbit, whom you know as Edward, then told me the truth about Jacob’s life. He’d only recently learned himself that he was alive. For many years, only a handful of people outside Echota knew. The people there had protected him, keeping the secret that he had survived because he asked them to and because they were respectful of his bravery at Horseshoe Bend and of his service at our ancient burial grounds. Once you visited, he released the people of Echota from their vows of silence. Word spread. By the time I was found, my
brother knew enough to tell me my titmouse had lied.
“Can you imagine my bittersweet happiness when I came to know? Poor Lulu, who thanks to you I’d thought miraculously alive, was truly dead, and my darling, who I thought long dead was suddenly alive! Now I wait until I am healed enough and then I will go to him, to my Jacob, and we will live the life that has been denied us nigh on twenty years.”
Throughout her story, Marian looked straight ahead at the wall of rock beyond with a singular determination as if the force of her mind could paint images of her recollections there. Now that it was over, she turned to Abe. Her eyes were ablaze, her entire face, haloed by spiked hair, shimmered with a delirious vision of the future. She looked half-mad to him. It occurred to him that the period of mourning she described when she’d thought Jacob dead at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend must have been her state of being when Hannah stumbled across her fields at the age of four. He wasn’t sure if he should ask her what sprang next to his mind, how wise it was to do so, or if, like one who walks in her sleep whose slumber should be left undisturbed, he risked shattering her by asking, but he asked anyway.
“Did Edward tell you how Jacob is nowadays? I mean, what happened to him?”
“Happened. Do you mean that he has lost good use of one leg, an arm? That his beauty, which I loved, is ruined?”
He nodded, watching her carefully for the smallest crack in her resolve. But there was none. She smiled, lifted her bandaged foot a little, and said, “We’ll make a fine pair, won’t we? Shuffling around old Chota together, chanting prayers to the dead. Oh, titmouse, titmouse. Why did you ask me? Did you think a love such as ours could ever dim from such a small thing? One of Waking Rabbit’s men told me you married a pretty girl with hair dark red like autumn leaves and pink cheeks. Would you abandon her if suddenly she were ugly or crippled?”
Abe opened his mouth to attest his fidelity to Hannah, but he hesitated just enough to undermine what followed. “Of course not,” he told her, blushing, as it felt quite odd to discuss Hannah with her. “She is my wife!” Marian raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips, scolding him. “I hope she is more than that,” she said. “One blanket can keep two dry in a pleasing rain, but not in a torrent.”
Abe squirmed in his seat. Would this woman always make him feel an idiot, an inferior? Would she always hover above him, an all-knowing force, seeing through him, chastising him, instructing him? Would they ever be simply a man and woman together, friends perhaps, brother and sister even, anything beyond this imbalanced, tortured relation? Once he’d thought there were a thousand points of congruity between them. Were they not both children of exile, seeking freedom from their oppressors, both rebels, adventurers in their separate ways? But now he realized that while he’d left the Old World and forged an identity that rejected much of it, one he reveled in, Dark Water strove with every ounce of her considerable strength to hold on to everything she knew of her past and the past of her people, that her past, their past, was, in fact, where she found her strength. A flash of shame went through him. The past was the strength of Jews also, but he’d pushed his heritage aside in his hurry to live an American life, to make his fortune, to marry a gentile. Worse, despite all that, despite his marriage to Hannah, despite the lovely future he’d mapped out for himself and his bride, despite the fact that this Dark Water of the mountains, his Marian, was soon to be reunited with the monster Jacob and happily so, he found himself wanting her as much as he ever had, more even. What impossible pain! His fists clenched where he’d placed them on the tabletop. His breath, belabored now, echoed through the heights and depths of the cave. The heat from the fire pit felt uncomfortably close and he broke into a sweat. His once beloved who did not, never did, love him regarded him with narrowed eyes.
“It’s time for you to go, Peddler. We will talk in Council tomorrow about reparations for the rubber damage.”
Peddler! Peddler! Would she ever bother to learn his name? Anger built up in him so that his desire twisted into a hot, thorny knot at his core. He could bear it no longer. His voice became weighted with a kind of whining command, his questions more like the barks of a small dog.
“When? When do you intend to go to him?”
His pique meant nothing to her. She rose from her table and limped alongside it using one hand against the wall to balance herself until she reached the caldron, where, taking a bowl and ladle, she served herself a fragrant helping of savory stew. She did not offer Abe any. She set her bowl on the table before returning to her seat. Once she was settled, she answered him.
“Soon. In a matter of weeks. He’s waiting for me. We’ve sent more messengers back and forth to each other than John Ross and Chief Pathkiller. He begged to come to me but I insisted he wait. Our law prevents him from traveling here without abandoning the sanctuary that brought him to Chota. My mother might enslave him again out of spite. After all we’ve been through, I would not have him jeopardize his life.”
“Let me take you to him,” Abe blurted out impulsively, without any forethought whatsoever.
“Why?”
Abe did not know why exactly himself. But the idea had come to him like a lightning bolt. Hannah always told him one should embrace such feelings. They were often divine in inspiration, she said. Alright then, he thought, I will pursue this queer spark of the brain. If I am late getting back home, Hannah will understand when I tell her of it. I’ll say it was under her direction in a way. As he analyzed things, he warmed up to the idea. His argument took on an impassioned flair.
“If I do, you can go sooner,” he said. “I can look after you along the way. Why should you and he spend a moment apart that’s not necessary?”
“Peddler. If that’s what I wanted, I could have one of my own people accompany me. No, I want to go to him as whole as I can be.”
“Please, let me do something for you. I owe you it.”
She did not respond but set to eating her stew, holding the bowl in two hands and bringing it to her mouth. Abe pulled an ace out of his back pocket.
“Alright, then. If you are concerned that he will love you less infirm …”
Dark Water slammed her bowl back on the table so that the contents splattered about.
“How dare you!” she said, eyes blazing.
“Prove I’m wrong. Let me take you.”
A few heartbeats of silence passed between them, combative heartbeats, no one backing down, then Dark Water laughed and slapped a hand against the tabletop. It was a sign of agreement. Favor blossomed between them and they made a plan. They would travel to Chota together in two days, after Abe had an opportunity to meet with the Council and settle on a claim against Sassaporta and Son. As the clan’s ghigua, Dark Water held a powerful seat on the Council. She was the peace chief, the one who settled arguments. She promised him fair if not generous treatment. Only after they’d worked out the details of the journey to Chota did she offer him stew, which they ate together, quietly, as in olden times. Afterward, he helped her to her bed and left her there unmolested, which made him feel virtuous.
Edward Redhand was at the mouth of the cave. He was alone. His men had left. He looked as if he had not budged during Abe’s audience with his sister but remained motionless under the moon, patient, immoveable, silent, keeping his own counsel, not the master of time nor its slave, but its partner. “I will take you to where you will sleep,” he said.
Abe followed him to a house finer than the other homes of the village, all of which were log homes, each of three or four rooms. The great house was twice as large as that. Its windows were glass paned and had curtains. There were flowering bushes in clay pots at its door, stones laid in decorative patterns in its yard. Two indistinguishable young Cherokee sat in rockers on its porch. They stood when Abe and Edward Redhand approached. Redhand introduced them as his twin brothers, Black Stone and White Stone. Everyone shook hands and they all entered the house.
They waited in a large foyer with hooked rugs and finely crafted tables upon which cut flowers in painted ceramic bowls were set. After a short while, an elder Cherokee woman entered, followed by her black slave. The woman was tiny, wizened, her skin the color of dark honey, bright golden butter, and copper all together. She was dressed extravagantly in a black taffeta dress of antique design with ample skirts and many flounces. As if the dress were not ornament enough, she wore a white lace dickey pinned to her breast by a ruby set in gold. Her white hair was arranged in a thick knot at the side of her neck, and a black square of cloth sat on the top of her head in the manner of the death’s cap English judges wear with a tasseled point coming forward over her brow. Her slave was a tall, heavyset woman in middle age, her thick waist and belly obvious under a sackcloth shift. She wore a frayed blue bandana around her head. Tight gray curls poked out all around it. Her face was broad, her features large, fleshy, and impassive. Her ankles were swollen, spilling over the sides of her moccasins. She was twice the size of her mistress.
The lady of the house extended a hand toward Abe while Edward Redhand made introductions.
“I present my mother, widow of Chief Redhand, and mother of Dark Water, White Stone, Black Stone, and me. Mother, this is that peddler we’ve told you about, Abe Sassaporta, who is known to our sister and who sold us rubber.”
At the word “rubber,” the widow of Chief Redhand slipped her hand out of Abe’s respectful grasp though she continued smiling up at him with cold, glittering eyes, two pebbles of blackest quartz.
“Welcome to my home,” she said. Her voice was low, reedy, the voice of an ancient, one laced with a weary cynicism. “I’m sure you are tired. Daniella will take you to your room.” She turned to quit his company, her head high, moving across the anteroom on tiptoe in the mincing steps of a grand lady, although it could have been her age that made her movements so small, so crabbed. It was impossible to him that this was the same woman who’d had strength enough to scratch a young, robust Marian near senseless with a fishbone when she’d rebelled against the idea of marriage to a settler husband. For all her antiquated finery, it was a fact her life had not gone the way she’d wished to shape it. Clearly, she’d suffered over that. He could well believe that this bitter woman would reenslave Jacob. “You may retire when you’re done, Daniella,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll undress myself tonight.”
An Undisturbed Peace Page 17