The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Charlie can’t wait to get back to Nashville, but I just don’t want to go. I’m tired of it.… I wish…”

  “Kelley! That girl of yours is in the kitchen, eating chocolate cake with both hands, and Clayt Stargill is egging her on. You’d better see to her—hello, Reverend Bruce, just the man I wanted to see.” Lilah Stargill, formidable in a shiny black dress with shoulder pads and an empire waist, thrust a piece of paper at him. “What do you make of this?”

  Will Bruce read the list of Bible verses, wondering exactly what the question was. “A selection of readings for bereavement?” he said. The collection of verses, mostly Old Testament, was unfamiliar to him. He wondered if she would be disillusioned if he admitted that he would have to look them up. “Where did you get them?” he asked.

  Lilah smiled. “I wondered if you’d recognize them. Before your time, I expect. Nora Bonesteel brought them yesterday. She came to the door, handed Robert Lee a cake and this list, and went away.”

  Will Bruce looked at the paper again. It was the spidery handwriting of an elderly woman, but the notations were plain enough:

  1st Kings 4:22. Four and a half C.

  Judges 5:25. One C.

  Jeremiah 6:20. Two C.

  1st Samuel 30:12. Two C.

  Nahum 3:12. Two C.

  Numbers 17:08. Two C.

  1st Samuel 14:25. Two TBSP

  Leviticus 2:13. One-fourth TSP

  Judges 4:19. One-half C.

  Amos 4:5. Two TBSP

  Jeremiah 17:11. Six, medium

  Tsp? Tbsp?

  He had it.

  “I haven’t seen this recipe in years,” he said, smiling, and handing it back to Lilah. “My mother used to make it for church social. She called it a scripture cake. You have to look up each verse to find out which ingredients to use. I should get a copy of this recipe for Laura. Have you tried it yet?”

  “Not to bake,” said Lilah. “I tasted a smidgeon of the one Miz Bonesteel brought. Nice of her to remember that we asked about it. It’s a kind of fruitcake, seems like. Dates, figs, almonds.”

  Will Bruce smiled. “I don’t think you’ll find chocolate mentioned in the Bible.”

  “Rudy says it ought to be.”

  Before Will could ask who Rudy was, someone touched him on the shoulder. “We’re ready to begin, Reverend.”

  He nodded. “I’m coming right now.” He set his face into an expression of solemnity, and went back into the parlor. It was time to pay the final respects to the dead, so that they all could get on with the business of living.

  * * *

  “Hello. My name is Daniel Boone.”

  It was early summer now. From the stage in the auditorium, Clayt Stargill faced an audience of adults, who had come to the Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough in search of quaintness, or perhaps looking for their Appalachian origins in the faces of the mountain people or in the patterns of the old stories. And now they were seeing Daniel Boone, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in leather breeches and a fringed deerskin shirt. They wondered why he wasn’t wearing his coonskin cap. Some of them wondered why he had been at the Alamo, because an actor named Fess Parker had played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett on television, thus confusing an entire generation of Americans about the two Appalachian pioneers.

  In the front row, Kayla Johnson sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, watching Clayt with shining eyes. “He’s gonna be my daddy,” she whispered to the tourist beside her, a blond young man wearing a white linen jacket over a black T-shirt. The man looked startled to be receiving confidences from a strange child, but Kayla smiled up at him, placed her finger on her lips, and turned back to hear the storytelling.

  “Daniel Boone … You may have heard of me. I passed through here many a time on my way to and from Kentucky. The Boone trail goes right through here, you know, and Jonesborough was a place of consequence in those days, and the scenery has an even more pleasing and rapturous appearance than the plains of Kentucky. But there were already too many people here. Why, from the front door of your cabin, you could oftentimes see your neighbor’s chimney smoke, so I lit out for wilder country.

  “We bought the land in Kentucky from the Cherokee at Sycamore Shoals in 1778, and there’s some that have said it wasn’t theirs to sell. That the deal was tainted by chicanery, and that there was a curse on those who took it from the Indians. I can almost believe that, my friends. The fact is that most of us settlers lost the land just as surely as the Shawnees did. And we ended up moving west right along with them.

  “Didn’t you think that in the old days, when this was a young, mostly empty country, that you could just claim a piece of land by homesteading it? Get in a covered wagon, go someplace where nobody had lived before, build you a cabin, plant your crops and the land was yours. Didn’t you think that? It sure looks that way in the movies, doesn’t it?”

  Some of the audience nodded, and no one seemed put off by the fact that “Daniel Boone” was talking about movies. Clayt said, “We’d like to think that the world was once that uncomplicated, but the fact is it plain flat never was. Daniel Boone is living proof of that.

  “I led the first settlers through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. I surveyed the land, built a fort at Boonesborough, and claimed three hundred thousand acres of Kentucky for myself. Excepting the Shawnee, who had more right to it?”

  He sighed. “Claimed three hundred thousand acres. Ended up with less than three hundred acres. And lost that.

  “How did that come about, you ask me?” He grinned and shook his head. “I’d give worlds to know, neighbors. What I learned after the fact was: the way to get hold of land in a new territory is not to go there in a wagon and tame the wilderness. No. A lot of the people who ended up owning Kentucky in the 1700s were fellows who never left Richmond, Virginia. Kentucky was part of Virginia in those days, you see. So these speculators made friends with someone in the state legislature, and in return they were given land grants of thousands of acres in the new territory.

  “Imagine that. You go to the wilderness, fight Indians, go hungry, freeze in the winter, and work yourself to death carving a farm out of an endless forest—and then you discover you have a landlord. And you owe him rent on your land. And that’s not the worst of it. The fact is, the Virginia legislature handed out a whole raft of land grants to all their city friends, and the amount given amounted to more land than there was in all of Kentucky.

  “Now when people have more land grants than there is land, you know you are in for trouble, and the one fellow certain to lose out is the honest man without any political strings to pull. That pretty much sums me up. The surveyors didn’t help any, either. Most of them weren’t very good at measuring land, and they added to the confusion. I ought to know: I was one of them. Never did have much of a head for figures.

  “So the land was claimed half a dozen times over, and then the lawyers got into it, and that’s when it’s time to quit.

  “The only help for it is to keep moving west, and try to outrun civilization, before the bureaucrats and the tax collectors can run over you.

  “That’s how come I ended up in Missouri in 1800 without an acre of land to my name. I was sixty-six years old. World famous, on account of a fellow called Filson writing a book about me, but I was broke and rootless.

  “Well, I guess they felt sorry for me, friends. First the Spanish government gave me some land, and when they reneged I went to the United States Congress, and I asked them to give a little land to the fellow that had opened the wilderness. I was careful not to call those politicians crooks, mind you. I just said it was a shame for an old man, a hero of the Revolution, to be so bereft in his final years.

  “And they gave me some land down there in the county of Femme Osage, Missouri. Even made me a magistrate of sorts. So I settled there, hunting and fishing, and enjoying the land. Sometimes, a few Shawnee would ride in, old adversaries of mine from the settling days in Kentucky. We were all old men now, and we h
ad more in common with each other than we did with the young people of our respective tribes. We’d hunt together and talk about the old days. About Kentucky. The land that we both lost.

  “Land. I used to say I explored from the love of Nature. ‘I’ve opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself was not what I was after.’ When you’re old you have to stop grieving over what might have been, I guess. But I would have liked to have been a fine Kentucky gentleman, with blood horses, and a big house for Rebecca, and fields as far as the eye can see.

  “There’s something about the human spirit that makes us love the land, and makes us want to own it, as if being master of all we survey will give us life everlasting, or perfect happiness. We know it isn’t so, but we can’t help ourselves. The Bible says the Lord made Adam from a lump of earth, and we’ve been trying to make the land turn us into Somebodies ever since.

  “Land. The only thing worth dying for.

  “I finally got me some land in Kentucky, you know. In the year 1845. Oh, yes, I was dead by then. Gone some twenty-five years, when the state of Kentucky declared me a hero and dug up my remains and shipped me back to Kentucky to be buried on a hill in the state capital. Got my land at last. Free and clear forever.

  “Six feet of land. All a man needs.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to all the generous and knowledgeable people who assisted me with technical information in the preparation of this book. I am especially grateful to Appalachian poet and naturalist Clyde Kessler, who advised me on ornithology and took me on field trips so that Clayt Stargill could speak about the wilderness with an informed voice. I am also grateful to Warren May, dulcimer maker from Berea, Kentucky, for his advice on woodworking with rosewood; to Marge Quinlan Hundley for the scripture cake; to Garry Barker and the Berea College Crafts program for their advice on building a coffin; to author and Knox County, Tennessee, sheriff’s deputy emeritus David Hunter and to Police Sergeant J. A. Niehaus for their advice in police procedure; and to the following people for help with detail and for their enthusiasm for this project: Bill and Susan Wittig Albert; Major Sue Tiller, USA; Kathryn Kennison; Jeffrey Marks; T. Campbell Welsh; Dr. Clarence Taylor; Brad Stansberry; Martha G. Whaley; Charlotte Ross; Jack Pyle; Taylor Reese; and Skeeter Davis.

  The following works were most helpful to me in preparing this novel. If you read only one of these books, let it be Mountains of the Heart, a truly lyrical guide to the natural history of Appalachia.

  Mountains of the Heart by Scott Weidensaul, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO, 1994.

  Daniel Boone by John Mack Faragher, Henry Holt and Company, 1992.

  Tales from the Cherokee Hills by Jean Starr, John F. Blair Publisher, Winston-Salem, NC, 1988.

  Old Frontiers by John P. Brown, Southern Publishers, Kingsport, TN, 1938.

  History of the Lost State of Franklin by Samuel Cole Williams, Overmountain Press, Johnson City, TN, 1933, rpt. 1993.

  Nancy Ward: Cherokee Chieftainess by Pat Alderman, Overmountain Press, Johnson City, TN, 1978, rpt. 1990.

  Where Legends Live: A Pictorial Guide to Cherokee Mythic Places by Douglas A. Rossman, Cherokee Publications, Cherokee, NC, 1988.

  Belled Buzzards, Hucksters and Grieving Specters/Appalachian Tales: Strange, True and Legendary by Gary Carden and Nina Anderson, Down Home Press, Asheboro, NC, 1994.

  Seasonal Guide to the Natural Year: Mid-Atlantic by Scott Weidensaul, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO, 1992.

  Death and Dying in Central Appalachia by James K. Crissman, University of Illinois Press, 1994.

  Dancing at Big Vein by Clyde Kessler, Pocahontas Press, Blacksburg, VA, 1987.

  The Moon Is Always Full by David Hunter, Pocket Books, 1991.

  THEMES AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE ROSEWOOD CASKET

  In The Rosewood Casket, I wanted to talk about the passing of the land from one group to another, as a preface to the modern story of farm families losing their land to the developers in today’s Appalachia. The voice of Daniel Boone is central to the novel’s message, a reminder that the land inherited by the farm families was once taken from the Cherokee and the Shawnee. The novel begins with Cherokee wisewoman Nancy Ward, in the last spring of her life, as she realizes that her people are about to lose the land that she tried so hard to preserve for them. As a reminder of that transience of ownership, in a passage in chapter one of The Rosewood Casket, I trace the passing of the land even further back, to a time at the end of the last Ice Age, twelve thousand years ago.

  Appalachia was a very different place at the end of the Ice Age, when the first humans are believed to have arrived in the mountains. The climate of that far-off time was that of central Canada today, too cold to support the oaks and hickories of our modern forests. Appalachia then was a frozen land of spruce and fir tree, but it was home to a wonderful collection of creatures: mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, camels, horses, sloths the size of pickup trucks, and birds of prey with wingspans of twenty-five feet. The kingdom of ice that was Appalachia in 10,000 B.C. was their world, and they lost it to the first human settlers of the region, who hunted the beasts to extinction in only a few hundred years. Losing the land is an eternal process, I wanted to say. It seemed fitting to start with these early residents, as a reminder that even the Indians were once interlopers.

  Although the title came from a nineteenth-century Tin Pan Alley tune (“The Rosewood Casket”), for me the theme song of the book is “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

  The supernatural aspect of the book is actually magic realism—the blurring of the line between the real and the supernatural with the equal acceptance of both. I put this in the book because I find it in the culture itself as an echo of the traditions brought to the region by the settlers from Celtic Britain. You will find the same patterns of second sight and revenants on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The family relationships in the book are a microcosm of the dilemma faced by families whose children must leave home to have careers.

  QUESTIONS

  1. You will be better prepared for this discussion if you do a little googling first. Find out about the Cherokee Ghigau Nancy Ward, the biography of Daniel Boone, the literary convention of magic realism, and the introduction of the starling songbird into this country. Also, read my essay on the land connections between Appalachia and Celtic Britain.

  2. This book contains many examples of people and things losing their land. I can think of five off the top of my head. How many can you find?

  3. Nora Bonesteel’s gift of the Sight is not uncommon among people of Scots-Irish descent. What examples of it have you seen in people you know?

  4. What effect does luxury land development have on the original residents of an area? If this were happening in your community, how would you deal with it?

  5. Robert Lee Stargill’s wife believes that she has a guardian angel named Rudy. Rudy actually (physically) appears to another character during the course of the novel. When and where does he show up, and how is this an example of magic realism rather than fantasy?

  6. Try making Nora Bonesteel’s scripture cake.

  7. Describe the landscape of east Tennessee in 10,500 B.C. (the end of the last Ice Age). Climate, air quality, inhabitants? What plants and animals would you see?

  8.I believe the future is simply the past, entered through another gate. How do modern characters in the book echo historical figures (e.g., Dovey Stallard and Nancy Ward, Clayt Stargill and Daniel Boone)?

  9. One of the problems of Appalachian stereotyping is that people assume that Appalachia is synonymous with poor people. But the differences between people are more a question of economics and social class rather than regional affiliation. It is important to stress this. Cities are judged by their richest inhabitants, and rural areas are judged by their poorest. How does your own region or ethnic group suffer from stereotyping?

  10. How are the conflicts between the songbirds—the starlings and the Bewick’s wrens—a metaphor fo
r the plight of the people in the novel?

  Also by Sharyn McCrumb

  THE BALLAD NOVELS

  If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

  The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter

  She Walks These Hills

  The Ballad of Frankie Silver

  The Songcatcher

  Ghost Riders

  The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

  The Ballad of Tom Dooley

  King’s Mountain

  THE NASCAR NOVELS

  St. Dale

  Once Around the Track

  Faster Pastor (with Adam Edwards)

  EARLY WORKS

  The Elizabeth MacPherson Novels

  Sick of Shadows

  Lovely in Her Bones

  Highland Laddie Gone

  Paying the Piper

  The Windsor Knot

  Missing Susan

  MacPherson’s Lament

  If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him

  The PMS Outlaws

  The Jay Omega Novels

  Bimbos of the Death Sun

  Zombies of the Gene Pool

  SHORT STORY COLLECTION

  Foggy Mountain Breakdown

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sharyn McCrumb is the author of The Rosewood Casket, the New York Times bestselling The Ballad of Tom Dooley, and many other acclaimed novels. Her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. She lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge, less than a hundred miles from the Smoky Mountains that divide North Carolina and Tennessee, where her family settled in 1790.

  For more information, please visit her Web site at

  www.sharynmccrumb.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.