The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  There was a ripple of laughter from the nine-year-olds, and he knew that they would listen now. The lesson could begin. A straight-backed wooden chair had been provided for him, but Clayt knew better than to sit down while trying to hold the attention of a room full of kids. He rested one foot on the seat of the chair and leaned forward, relaxed, as if he were telling tales at a campfire. He had to transport them back to frontier Tennessee, make them forget that they were sitting in a glass and cinder-block classroom with computers on the tables behind them.

  “Bet you thought I was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, but I wasn’t. I was born in a proper wooden house in eastern Pennsylvania in the year 1734. America was still a colony of Great Britain in those days, and my father had come over from England as a young man about twenty years before I was born, hoping to make his fortune in the new world. My parents were Quakers, and, like most everybody else in the community, they were farmers. I didn’t want to be a farmer, though.” He grinned at them. “I didn’t like school too much, either. Schooling and farming interfered with my hunting. But I sure did love to read. I used to take a book with me to the woods on my long hunts. I went on my first one when I was sixteen. We left eastern Pennsylvania, which was downright civilized in 1750, and we headed for the back country, where it was wi-ild!” He roared the last word and stooped down to give his audience a mock grimace. “Where it was primitive! Where it was downright dan-ger-ous!”

  He waited a moment while they shivered in anticipation.

  “Where do you-uns think I went?”

  Nobody ventured a guess.

  “Why, right here!” he roared at them.

  He let the shock sink in for five heartbeats before he continued.

  “Right here in east Tennessee! I didn’t get here right away, of course. Place as dangerous as this, you have to work up to it. First place the Boone clan settled was in Bedford County, Virginia, which is about the anklebone of the Blue Ridge, and then we went on to a farm near the Yadkin River in North Carolina. From there I hunted all the way into Tennessee, stayed gone months at a time. There were a lot of deer in these mountains then. And elk. And bear. And buffalo.” He peered down at the pinkest blond girl. “You ever eat buffalo?”

  She gaped at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head.

  “Well, you ought’a try it. It’s better for you than cow’s meat. Lean. Yes, there was a lot of game in these mountains. It was the common hunting ground of the Cherokee, the Shawnee, and the Catawba, and they didn’t take too kindly to outsiders coming in and shooting their game. I figured there was enough for everybody, though, so I camped up in the mountains, sometimes near what folks now call Boone, North Carolina, and I hunted all winter. A time or two I’d meet up with Cherokee or Shawnee, but they never hurt me. They’d just take my pelts, and let me go.”

  He grew solemn. “That’s not to say it wasn’t perilous to wander these mountains. One of the great sorrows of my life happened right near here, in the Powell Valley, close to where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina all come together.

  “It was 1773, after I had married Rebecca Bryan, and some of our children were most nigh grown. We were headed out to Kentucky with a group of pioneers to found a settlement, a whole caravan of loaded packhorses and livestock, and women and children—families going to Kentucky to start a new life. It wasn’t a wagon train, mind you, like you see in the western movies. The trail to Kentucky was just a one-man trail over the mountains and through deep woods—we’d have to go single file a good part of the way. So we put our goods in hickory baskets slung over a packsaddle—and younguns littler than you folks would ride in one, too—and we aimed to walk all the way to Kentucky—going slow and noisy—through Indian country.

  “Kentucky was a far piece away in those days—beyond the pale of civilization. We were glad to go but sad about leaving some of our loved ones behind. I saw my mother for the last time when we set off on that journey.

  “But there was more sorrow to come.

  “We got to about here—near what’s now Gate City, Virginia, when I began to think we hadn’t brought enough provisions. I sent my son James and some of his friends ahead of us to Castle’s Wood to get extra supplies for the journey from Captain Russell there. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of miles ahead of us, but that’s a long way in a dark and savage wilderness. He was sixteen years old, that’s all he was. We didn’t even hear them scream.”

  He took a deep breath, waiting for his words to sink in, while he sized up his wide-eyed audience. They were too young for details, he decided. Horror movies were one thing, but this was a true story that had happened nearby, no matter how long ago: this was the stuff of nightmares. Clayt had them himself often enough when he first read the account of the killing of James Boone and his party.

  “While they were asleep that night, a party of Delawares, and maybe some Shawnee and a Cherokee called Big Jim, ambushed them, and hurt them pretty bad.” One of Captain Russell’s slaves got away into the forest and was able to observe all that happened next. The young men were shot, slashed with knives, and then tortured. The nails of their fingers and toes were torn out, the agony drawn out until they begged for a quick death. James called out for his mother. Such terrible details were more than these youngsters needed to hear, two hundred and twenty-two years later, on a bright sunny morning.

  “They were dead before morning. Captain Russell’s men buried the bodies, putting two in each grave. The next spring I went back alone, and I dug up that grave, and buried my boy separately, and said words over him. The rest of the party lost interest in Kentucky after that tragedy. They turned around and headed back to North Carolina, but my family didn’t go back. Rebecca and I stayed the winter in a little cabin on the Clinch River. We were going to Kentucky.

  “You know, I was acquainted with Big Jim, the Cherokee that tortured my son. I’d met him before on one of my long hunts, and I’d meet him again, thirteen years later. I saw him killed and scalped by some of my own men, but it wasn’t me that dispatched him off to the Hereafter. I never did hate the Indian people, like some of the settlers did. Even after what happened to my boy, I still respected them, and I called one or two of them friend. They were only protecting their land—land that was given to them in a treaty by the king of England—and they figured on teaching trespassers a lesson when they killed James and his friends. I might have done the same, if I was protecting what was mine. Land is a powerful thing. City people may have forgotten what it is to be one with the land, but the rest of us feel it, pulling us back like the current in that big Clinch River.

  “That’s why I was going to Kentucky, you know. It wasn’t just to get away from big cities and fancy society. It was because all the land in the east was already taken. I wanted land. And the Shawnee and the Cherokee wanted it, too. We wanted it the same way—not like the folks back east who wanted it as an investment, but would never set foot on it. I wanted land that I could belong to, more than the other way around. I guess I had more in common with those Shawnees and Cherokees than I did with my own people.…”

  He came to himself then, and remembered that he was talking to Mrs. Sampson’s third grade class, and that this wasn’t the side of Daniel Boone they needed to hear about on first acquaintance. He reserved history’s complexities for high school students and adult groups. Clayt paused for a moment, and smiled at the puzzled children to ease the tension. “’Course the Indians didn’t beat me all the time, neighbors. Why, one time in Kentucky, they kidnapped my daughter Jemima and two of her friends out of a boat, and it took me all afternoon to get her back!”

  * * *

  Robert Lee tore his brother’s note off the front door of the farmhouse. “If that isn’t just like Clayt!” he told Lilah. “He goes off and leaves the door unlocked with a note on the door. Why not just invite the burglars to a yard sale? Put up signs along the highway, why don’t he?”

  “Well, Robert, I don’t suppose your poor old father had much i
n there that would be worth stealing,” said Lilah. She didn’t think Clayt had showed good sense, either, but there was no point in letting Robert get all worked up about it. Rage always made Robert Lee dyspeptic, so she tried to soothe him as best she could. No use having to drive twenty miles for Pepto Bismol.

  “What we have worth stealing is not the point, Lilah. This carelessness just goes to show how hopeless Clayt is. He doesn’t think. Lives in his own rosy little world. Besides, Mother had some nice dishes that Daddy got her from overseas, and her good Oneida silver-plate. You want to see them sold in some pawn-shop in Johnson City?”

  Lilah shook her head. “You have enough on your mind with your daddy’s illness, without getting all upset about a burglary.” She couldn’t help adding, “… which didn’t happen.”

  “We might as well go in and make ourselves at home,” muttered Robert. “Knowing Clayt, he’s probably left a mess of dishes and dirty laundry for you to do.”

  The pronoun was not lost on Lilah. She sighed. Just her luck to be the first one here, even though the other two lived hours closer to east Tennessee. Still, she supposed that the other Stargill women wouldn’t be much use, anyhow. Charles Martin had him a sweet young thing that they hadn’t even met yet—probably a model or some gal trying to be the next Crystal Gayle. A lot of help she’d be—all press-on nails and hair mousse. And Garrett’s wife, Debba, had about as much gumption as wet Kleenex. It would be faster to do the work yourself than to follow around behind her, telling her every single thing. And Rudy had better not come out with any angelic homilies about the virtue of good works, either, because after a long drive and a lumpy motel bed, she was in no mood for it.

  Robert Lee opened the door for her and went to get the bags out of the car, so Lilah went in by herself, feeling a little odd to be there alone for the first time in her life. She had never really felt comfortable in the home of Robert’s parents. They were always carefully polite, but she always felt their indifference. She was as much a stranger after twenty-five years as she had been as a bride.

  The Stargill homeplace was not considered fancy when it was built, but now with its high ceilings, fireplaces, hardwood floors, and solid plaster walls, it would be a showplace if anybody could be bothered to fix it up. Randall Stargill never had. Anyhow, the place was kept in decent repair, and it was big enough. They had large families a century ago when the wood frame house was built. The front hall, with oak flooring and wainscotting, contained the stairs and doorways leading left to the living room and right to a sitting room and Randall’s bedroom, which had been a dining room in the days when a large farm family gathered there for hot, noisy dinners. The kitchen was a long narrow room stretching across the back of the ground floor. The big iron range had been gone nearly half a century, replaced by a small white gas stove and a refrigerator. No need anymore to store perishable food in the earthen icehouse built into the hill out back.

  Upstairs there were four bedrooms, unused for a decade or more. When the Stargill boys had grown up and gone, Randall and Clarsie had closed off the unheated upstairs, turning the dining room into a bedroom, as age and infirmity shrunk their territory into three dingy rooms.

  “This place feels hollow,” Lilah said aloud.

  Although the rooms looked just the same as always, with nothing out of place, Lilah could feel the emptiness. The house was a box with some furniture in it now; nothing more. It was not a home, not the boys’ home, and not even Randall’s any more. She felt that. Randall Stargill had left it not only physically, but spiritually, she thought, leaving not even a spark of feeling behind him. Perhaps the spark of feeling had not been there to begin with, and it was only now that she had the solitude to notice it.

  “Well, it’s not as bad as I expected,” said Robert Lee as he set the bags down beside the sofa.

  “We haven’t been upstairs yet,” Lilah reminded him.

  “Lord, I can picture it.” Robert shuddered. “I hope the vacuum cleaner still works. You know how my dust allergies act up. I say everybody ought to have to clean his own room. Clayt won’t have done it, that’s for sure.”

  “Clayt had quite enough to worry about with your dad taken ill,” said Lilah. “He doesn’t live here, either, you know.”

  Robert scowled. “I don’t suppose there’s any food in the house, either.”

  “I don’t suppose Clayt would know what to buy,” said Lilah. “People’s eating habits are so peculiar these days. Clayt’s a vegetarian—or he was, last we heard, and who knows what Charles Martin and his friend will be wanting? Besides, we’ll be eating out mostly, won’t we?”

  Robert pursed his lips. “This is Wake County, hon. What restaurants there are fry everything in lard. I’m not risking my arteries on down-home cooking.”

  Lilah correctly interpreted this to mean that Robert did not want to bear the expense of an indefinite span of restaurant meals. She supposed she would have to draw up a grocery list for him, and she might as well put Pepto Bismol on the list, because she could see it coming. Robert always got nervous when he went home. She thought it would be different with the old man in a coma, but apparently the habit of anxiety was too ingrained for Robert to break it now. Robert was the oldest, and he felt that any success enjoyed by his younger brothers was a reproach to him for not being more successful. The old man hadn’t helped matters any, either. He would listen to Robert’s recital of small triumphs with an expression of polite disinterest, then say something like, “Salesman of the month, huh, Robert? That’s real nice. You know, Charles Martin wrote to me the other day from Rome, Italy. He’s doing a concert over there this month. Sent me a picture of himself with Loretta Lynn at the Opry—got her to sign it to me, too. You want to see it?” Or Garrett would have done something heroic in his helicopter, or Clayt caught a three-pound brook trout last week. She wondered if Randall Stargill’s reaction was calculated to wound his eldest son, or if he honestly didn’t realize the pain he caused. She wondered if the other boys had their egos deflated by the old man in similar hurtful exchanges. Perhaps she would ask them, if she ever got the chance.

  * * *

  Clayt Stargill was tired. He had finished his Daniel Boone presentation around three, and without changing out of his pioneer costume, he’d driven straight to the hospital to check on his father. There was no change. The old man slept peacefully, impervious to hospital routine—and to visitors. After twenty minutes of silence in the sterile beige room, Clayt felt that he had postponed the family reunion as long as he could, so he left.

  When he got back to the Stargill homeplace at five, he saw his brothers’ cars: two in the gravel driveway and one in the side yard, far enough from the road to be safe from vandals, and far enough from the other cars to be in no danger from scrapes when they backed out. That would be Charles Martin’s car, of course.

  It was easy to tell which car belonged to each of them. Robert Lee’s was the newest make of his dealership, but not the most expensive model, and it was a fishy green color that probably didn’t appeal to most of the customers. Clayt wondered if Robert had chosen the car, or it if had been foisted off on him by the dealership.

  Charles Martin had a silver Lexus. Befitting his image of the successful celebrity. He probably had something a little more rugged in his garage when photo opportunities called for a down-home look, but the Lexus suited him. Charles Martin had always been very shrewd about tailoring his image. Clayt remembered reading an interview once in a country music magazine in which his brother had said, “I think the Chieftains’ Long Black Veil album is one of the finest I’ve ever heard. I have that CD in every one of my cars.” Now, on the face of it, the remark was a generous compliment to fellow musicians, but Clayt thought it no accident that the reader was also left with the very clear message that Charles Martin Stargill was so successful that he owned a fleet of cars, each with its own CD player. A simple statement about someone else’s album was turned into a plug for Charles Martin. The shiny silver Lexus said style,
success, and affluence. Clayt wondered if it was anywhere close to being paid for.

  The third vehicle, a black Blazer, belong to Chief Warrant Officer Garrett Stargill, U.S. Army, a fact attested to by the 101st Airborne bumper sticker and the Fort Campbell parking decal. Rugged and sensible: that was Garrett, all right. His wife was another matter. Clayt couldn’t imagine what she would drive. It would have to be something feminine and yet utterly safe: perhaps a pink Sherman tank.

  Clayt parked his ’78 four-wheeler behind the Lexus. He noticed that Dovey’s car was not there, but then, he didn’t blame her for not wanting to be around at this stage. First the four brothers would have to talk, and then, after the dust settled, they could be neighborly.

  Before Clayt was even out of the truck, Garrett came out, letting the screen door bang behind him. “We were going to the hospital,” he said, leaning down, as Clayt rolled down the driver’s side window.

  “I just came from there,” Clayt told him. “Daddy’s in a coma, but holding his own. He won’t know you’re there.”

  “Maybe he will,” said Garrett.

  “We need to talk about some things,” said Clayt. “He left instructions.”

  “Save it,” said Garrett. “The rest of us have had long drives, and worrying about Daddy’s health comes first. Then we’ll have a business meeting. How about later tonight, when we get back from Johnson City. If you don’t mind the late hours. You have any place to go early tomorrow morning?”

  “Tomorrow? No.”

  Garrett Stargill grinned. “Didn’t figure you would.”

  * * *

  Nora Bonesteel didn’t know what had awakened her. It hadn’t been a sound. More like a feeling that something was there. She sat up in the old iron bedstead and strained her eyes looking into the shadows. The curtains were drawn, and the nightlight from the hall did not quite reach into the corners of her room. Something was there. No use to turn the light on for what had come.