An Undisturbed Peace (17 page)

From Greensborough to Cherokee Country

M
elting rubber stinks in a particular way, and the open windows and doors of Sassaporta and Son caught a breeze that ushered that horrid stink into the store. Those on the floor coughed at its arrival or covered their nostrils and mouths with handkerchiefs. At first there was great confusion. Had the earth erupted and expelled the reek of hell? Had rotted corpses fallen from the skies into the street? Then the Cherokee in charge strode through the door, his men bearing baskets of ruined rubber, and the malodorous air suddenly had an undeniable source.

There were five of them in all. The Cherokee was a tall, imposing figure in a white man's frock coat and trousers, but bare of chest in the heat of summer. He wore a beaded cross belt beneath the coat, one with a red background overlaid by designs of blue and white, in which a pipe and tomahawk were inserted. Another belt of similar configuration circled his waist. The butt of a pistol stuck out of it at one hip while a deerskin pouch dangled from the other. Around his neck, a silver medallion in the shape of a half moon threaded on a rope of rawhide hung level to his heart. He wore English boots with his trousers tucked into their tops, and under a broad-brimmed Quaker-style black hat, his hair was cut short. The other four men were black slaves dressed in worn hemp tunics, drawstring pants, and simple moccasins. Each held in arms bulging with effort a large basket filled with a heavy, stinking black substance. At a gesture from the Cherokee, they dropped the baskets on the floor and stepped back.

Abe had the misfortune to be behind the front desk that day, his stepfather having accompanied his mother on a social call. Hannah, who'd been in the back taking inventory, came out holding a perfumed cloth to her nose to see what repellent odor weighted the air. She arrived in time to hear the Cherokee's complaint and witness the backs of customers fleeing the emporium floor as quickly as they could without appearing to panic.

“You have sold us demon's spunk for coin and skins,” the man said. “Like every demon, it was beautiful when first we saw it, but now it melts and reveals its true nature. It despoils our homes, our fields, and our hunting grounds. You may have it back. But first your men must come to our homes in the mountains, to our fields and our hunting grounds and take it away as the rain will not wash it and the sun cannot burn it off. You will return our coin and skins as well.”

Having spoken, the Cherokee lifted his chin and folded his arms across his chest, his right hand very close to the butt of his pistol. Abe stood silent with his mouth open while his mind swarmed with the disastrous ramifications of what he'd just heard. Rubber melted. Once it melted, it adhered. It stank. Unbearably. Would all the rubber they'd sold, all those hundreds of pounds, suffer a similar fate? The sun in the mountains where many Cherokee lived was stronger during the day than it was in the middle towns and foothills, but the lower ground would soon catch up, within weeks, as summer took hold. If all that rubber melted too, Sassaporta and Son was ruined.
No,
he prayed,
no, no, no, no, no
. The Indians must have done something queer to it. How to find out? His wife, dear Hannah, whose parents had taken home dozens of rubber items after the wedding, stood behind him, poking his back to prompt him to speak. When he did not, she dropped the cloth from her face and took over.

“Sir,” she said, smiling sweetly, addressing him with uncommon respect. “Why don't you and Mr. Sassaporta retire to the offices back there and discuss the matter in full? I am sure we can accommodate you, but this is all something of a shock and we need to understand exactly what's happened, don't we, dear?”

Abe awoke from his miserable stupor. He gestured to the back rooms and even bowed but very slightly. “Yes, yes sir. Follow me.” The Cherokee dropped his arms and prepared to do so. Hannah interrupted his movement. “But please, sir, might you have your men there remove the baskets? They can leave them behind the store, in the livery area, until we determine what to do.” An order was given, Hannah's request accommodated. But for a round of disturbed whinnies coming from the livery once the spoiled product was deposited there, all was exceedingly quiet as the Cherokee and Abe settled into the office at the back.

Abe sat behind Isadore's desk, the Cherokee sat in the red leather chair opposite. With the energies of a Joshua, Abe marshaled his resolve to appear in-charge, accommodating, and civil. He was well aware that the man sitting across from him was a generation older than him, by his demeanor, a leader of his people, accustomed to obedience as his birthright, and that his grievance against Sassaporta and Son was probably just. At the same time, this odiferous debacle had the capacity to spiral out of control, especially if the melting occurred to all the rubber they'd sold. He didn't yet dare contemplate what difficulties he and Isadore would be in if the rubber they'd convinced the family franchises to purchase had also spoiled. For now, he was primarily concerned with his neighbors. If the local whites learned he'd been especially generous to the initial complainant, the Cherokee, they would expect, no, demand even more. While hope dimmed, he longed for there to be something wrong with the Indian's story. All this would simply go away if only he could trap the Indian out in a lie or even a small exaggeration that somehow exonerated rubber. With these thoughts and a thousand offshoots of them running through his mind, it was all Abe could do to plant a pleasant look on his face and nod for the man to begin.

“It is as I tell you,” the Cherokee said. “The rubber first melted when we laid it upon flat rock in the high places. The traders told us this rubber comes from bleeding trees. Our
gighua
, our Beloved Woman, told us we must thank the tree spirits for giving their blood for our use. We spread out sheets of it, those tarpaulins your men sold at the trading posts, and on the sheets we laid the sacred crystals our priests use for divining that as Father Sun rose and set, they would capture a portion of His eternal light and this new thing might be blessed. Instead, as you can see, it melted and released its poisonous vapors into the air. It sticks to the rock and only by hardest labor can we scrape most of it off. There is a remnant that lingers like a scar upon the earth.”

Abe chose to display empathy. Apology felt dangerously entangled with compensation, which had yet to be determined. Empathy was safer. “It's a terrible thing you tell me. Terrible,” he said. He opened his palms, pointing them upward as if entreating the heavens. “A most unfortunate event.”

“Hmph,” muttered the Cherokee. He continued. “It is a sacrilege. The stuff sticks not only to the rock but to our priests' crystals. We put them in holy fire and still they are streaked with blackness. The light inside them is trapped. It cannot be seen, nor read for signs. We have had to find new crystals and to purify them. For a time, our priests could not read omens at all. Then there are the other things that melted.”

Baruch Ha-Shem
. There were other things. Abe's heart sank to the pit of his stomach and sizzled there as if fried in a vat of bile. His head felt light, almost dizzy. “And what are these other things, if I may ask?”

“Hmph,” muttered the Cherokee. “You may ask. Everything has melted. The pots, the spoons, the boots. Oh, yes, the boots. On one occasion, they melted on a fisherman's feet while he slept in the heat of high noon by a riverbank. He was stuck there for some time. He could not get his feet out of the boots nor the boots out of the ground. When he did not come home as expected, his wife sent out his elder sons looking for him. When they found him, they cut his boots from the earth and then his flesh from the boots. Hopefully, he will walk again.”

There were other stories of the rubber disaster in the high places of Cherokee country. None were as gruesome as the man who required cutting from his boots, although the rest were disturbing on their own. Yet no matter what the human cost in life or treasure, what seemed to bother the Cherokee most was the defilement of the crystals, an event he kept returning to, relentless as the chimes of a clock, and the defilement of the forest and mountainside. “Everywhere there are piles of it in the spots people have managed to leave it. Sometimes, it remains where the people put it in the hours before they were about to use it but then it melted at the last moment and became unwieldy. In other words, it is next to their house or in it. Wherever it sits, it contaminates either by scent or by its thickness and its ugliness. You have done this. You must clean it up.”

It was at this point, when the Cherokee had summed everything up, when Abe was ready to give the man whatever he asked, that Isadore burst in, his hands flying through the air in gestures of welcome to the Cherokee and in warning to Abe, that one might be becalmed until they'd talked and the other quieted before he gave away the store. Without delay, Isadore demonstrated his experience in dealing with unhappy customers by affecting an air of cordiality and formally introducing himself, then introducing Abe as his son, and lastly, with a little bow before settling in the chair Abe vacated, he asked, with humility and respect, “And I have the pleasure of speaking with whom?”

The Cherokee, who was by now becoming impatient, lifted his hand long enough from the butt of his pistol to shake the one the elder Sassaporta extended. “I am Edward Redhand,” he said. “Eldest son of Chief Redhand, whom you may know as the neighbor once upon a time of Theodore Rupert, who took over my father's land after the death of his son, William, as recompense.”

Abe paled, swayed on his feet a little, but the others did not notice. Inside his skull, the Cherokee's words reverberated. The man before him was none other than Marian's brother.

“Yes,” Isadore said while Abe struggled to recover himself, “I recall that incident. Very unfortunate. I recall your people appealed to the courts on the land issue and, after some years, were denied. You removed yourselves, as I also recall, to the Unicoi mountain peaks, no? Yes. A small contingent of your people remained here, I think, until recently, when for some reason you came down from the mountain and collected them. I heard you did this in anticipation of the Removal Act. This is what I heard.”

Abe wondered how it could be his uncle knew so much and he so little about the movements of his departed lover's family. Had Isadore any idea that Edward Redhand's sister was the wanton Cherokee sprite his mother reviled? New torments afflicted him. His mouth went dry, his head swam. His heart left his belly in a single leap to reassert itself in his chest where it pounded like a steel hammer against his rib cage. He sunk onto the stool next to the desk, the one Isadore stood upon when he needed to reach the highest levels of shelving behind him. What would the Cherokee say if he knew the young man sitting there, his back pressed against the wall that he not keel over, was the catalyst of his sister's death? Worse, what would he do? Did Edward Redhand even know she was dead? It was well known that news traveled swiftly through the mountains from Indian village to Indian village, at rates and by methods no white man fully understood. Surely by now it was common knowledge among her people that she'd disappeared. Surely they at least must presume her dead. He had time to think these questions over while the Cherokee repeated to the older man his tale of what happened to the tribal rubber and his stepfather responded to his visitor's demands, time enough for Abe to come to a thick fog of acceptance for whatever might come next, whether ruination of the family business or his torture, perhaps death, at the hands of an avenging brother. When Isadore finally spoke his name, he turned his head to him expressionless, numbed to fate.

“Abrahan, I want you to travel with Mr. Redhand to his village in the mountains and assess the damage that's been wrought in this most horrible manner. You understand, Mr. Redhand, that I must have a witness to the destruction you describe before we settle on compensation.” Marian's brother shrugged. Of course you shrug, Abe thought, you'll have me as hostage. Not that I deserve less. “In the meantime, I will communicate with Mr. Goodyear in Boston. It is his product, and in the end, it will be him what pays!” Isadore slapped his hands on the desk with finality and everyone stood. He shook the Cherokee's hand once more. “Let the lad bid goodbye to his wife first,” he finished. “He is newly wed.” At this, the Cherokee lifted an eyebrow. “Hmph,” he said. He went outside to wait for Abe and ready his men for the return trek.

As soon as he was gone, Isadore's congenial manner evaporated. He grabbed Abe by the shoulders and, spittle flying, said in a quiet, urgent voice, “Inspect every inch of his land! Closely! Draw maps, take notes! Interview the purchasers of the melted rubber! I need to determine if this will happen to all my rubber, or if somehow the Indians got hold of a rotten batch. I need enough evidence to threaten Goodyear with a lawsuit, and oh my, I need to cancel that reorder, which is probably as we speak on its way south by train. Dear Lord, this could ruin us. Ruin! Quick, go say fare-thee-well to Hannah and be off!”

Once Abe turned to leave, Isadore grabbed him again. “But don't take too long. The last thing we need is parties of angry Cherokee riding into town, scaring away all the customers. If we are to mitigate their losses somehow, keep them peaceable, the Cherokee must be at the front of the line. If the farmers hereabouts start complaining, that may be hard to do. Yes, yes, son. Whatever it takes, I will try to make this right. I've worked too hard and too long to win the confidence of my neighbors that I'll not end things as ‘that Jew who stole our money.' Ruin or not. The Quakers are good people, but they too will want a piece of our hide.”

Abe collected Hannah and led her to the livery that he might tack up Hart. She'd had her ear to the back room and knew everything. As soon as they were alone, she said, “This Edward Redhand is the brother of that Dark Water we spoke of! Remember? The one my father warned you of, the one I spied, hatter mad, as a child! Oh, the nightmares I had of her!” Hannah shuddered and grasped him around the waist from behind while he tightened Hart's girth. “He may well be as savage as she, no matter how he dresses or how well he speaks. Please, be careful, my love. I swear, I'd rather have you poor and whole than rich and mutilated by a Cherokee brute!”