An Undisturbed Peace (18 page)

Abe felt as if his head were already on a spike. Impending punishment for his sins threw in stark relief all the wrongheaded ideas he'd entertained since he'd arrived in America. Fresh awareness washed them away as surely as a deluge cleanses a gully of loose rock and refuse. He knew now he'd lived the past years inside a mist of whimsical thought and naïve feeling while all along harsh reality nipped at his heels, getting ready to bite. There were signs of calamity everywhere, yet he'd blathered along, utterly unaware. What was he thinking? Could he ever have been so young? Why had he ever been so sure Marian would love him? What blind dreams he'd entertained on her behalf! Her world and his, while overlapped, were as far apart as London from New York, and Lisbon from both. Why had he thought he'd never love another when this dear woman whose tears wet the back of his shirt had so effortlessly delivered to him a month's worth of nightly bliss despite his broken heart? In a matter of minutes, he was to march off into the unknown with a suited, shirtless Cherokee who had every reason to hate him and every opportunity for cruel revenge at his disposal. Envisioning a dark and justifiable fate, deadened by guilt, he told his wife, yes, he'd be careful, and gave her an embrace that, while long and lingering, felt empty and hopeless to him.

Abe rode around to the street where Edward Redhand waited in a two-horse wagon, his slaves sprawled about its bed, catching a rest. “Hitch that horse to the backboard, and sit up here with me,” the Cherokee said, and Abe did so.

Their trek into the mountains was arduous. Abe knew the range they traveled was known by the Cherokee as the Unicoi, or White, Mountains for its thick fogs. Often, it was near impossible to see clearly as far as one's outstretched hand. Their progress was slow. Abe grew anxious and tried to engage his companions in conversation to ease his nerves. Edward Redhand was not terribly convivial, preferring silence to Abe's chatty attempts. He tried also to engage the black men in the wagon bed, but these were no more forthcoming than their master, giving him only the yessirs and nossirs slaves are wont to employ when a freeman not their master addresses them. They talked among themselves both in Cherokee and an island patois Abe did not understand, so it was possible their comprehension of English was limited. When they stopped for the day, Redhand hunted for small birds and mammals, and one of the slaves roasted the game over the fire. One of the birds wasn't consumed by the men, but instead Redhand raised it to the skies in offering and then incinerated it. After dinner, he and Abe slept in their bedrolls, while the others slept on the bare ground. At breakfast, the slaves heated up round cakes made of cornmeal that they carried with them. One night, Redhand scraped a length of bark off a walnut tree, crushed it, and placed a walnut powder in a nearby stream to drug the fish that they might be more easily caught in the morning. Abe awoke just after dawn to the sounds of slaves splashing about in the cold mountain waters, catching dull-witted trout with their bare hands. That morning, breakfast was a feast. When they were three days into their trip, the heir to Sassaporta and Son found himself lulled by the pure air, the breathtaking vistas of green woods, rushing springs, soaring mountains, and his companion's silence. He reasoned that if Edward Redhand knew his sister was dead, he could not possibly know his lie had driven her to it. Abe would have been long dead and the fact that he was not gave him confidence. He found Marian's brother admirable on many accounts. He seemed much like his sister. He wished they could speak openly to each other. That they could talk about Marian, share their memories. He could not help himself. He brought her up, in a way.

“I've sold goods to this Rupert family who won your father's land,” he said. “I only know rumors about what happened between them and your people. I'm sure you were probably in the right, no matter what townsfolk and settlers say.” He moved his head side to side philosophically, in imitation of every wise old man he'd ever met. “I'm telling you, money and power make men perverse. Over to the Rupert plantation, even the house slaves have airs.”

Edward Redhand pulled the wagon's team into a dead halt, securing the reins. He turned and looked at Abe with narrowed eyes, mouth and jaw sternly set. Abe swallowed but held his gaze. “What do these townsfolk and settlers say?” Redhand asked. Abe hemmed and hawed until he thought of something to report, then spit it out. “They say a slave belonging to your father murdered the Rupert son, who was a spoiled boy growing quickly into a bad man. This slave—a Jacob, I think?—then took refuge at Chota.” His chest heaved with excitement at his recklessness, but the other man did not react, either to his condition or his evocation of the name Jacob. His eyes remained narrowed, his voice slow and deep. “And why would this Jacob,” he asked, “this slave of my father, murder the boy if he had not yet finished becoming bad?” Abe responded without hesitation. “That's the part I'd love to know,” he said. “I heard it had something to do with a Cherokee woman, perhaps the slave's lover.” Redhand's mouth pursed. He cocked his head and looked at Abe quizzically, as if well puzzled. “Do you know her name?” he asked. And Abe, telling himself in for a penny, in for a pound, looked up at the blue sky as if searching there for his memory. “I think it was … let's see now … I think it was Dark Water. Or—and I know this sounds crazy—but maybe … let's see, an
m
name … maybe Marian too.” Edward Redhand reached forward to unwind the team's reins from where he had secured them on the wagon's brake post. He lifted them with one hand and took up a whip with the other. “Dark Water?” Abe pretended to think. “Yes, I'm sure that's it.” The Cherokee raised his whip. “Or maybe Marian?” Abe wrinkled his brow. “I think so.”

Crack! The whip sliced the air and landed not on the horses' flanks but on the side of the wagon wheels, its sound nonetheless driving the beasts off at a wild pace through rough woodland paths. The cab and bed bounced dreadfully as it sped over rocks and crashed through puddles, which sprayed upward wetting the men as high as their shoulders. The black men held on to the sides of the bed for dear life. Abe held fast to the edges of his seat. Behind them, Hart's lead snapped at the sudden jolt forward, yet he galloped alongside fighting to keep up. All the while, Redhand laughed like a madman. “Ha, ha! Ha, ha! Dark Water, I think!” he cackled over the terrible sounds of the wagon racing over unruly ground. “Ha, ha! Maybe Marian? Ha, ha!” They coursed through a rut that was deeper than any of them surmised. The wagon listed to one side so far it nearly tipped over. The men in back rolled with the list to land in a mass of legs and arms against the cab's right side. Abe twisted so far he banged a knee, when sheer momentum twisted him back or surely he would have been thrown off the vehicle and landed against stone and tree. At last Edward Redhand had had his fun. He slowed the wagon. Abe and the slaves suffered coughing fits from the dust raised by a riotous ride. The Cherokee breathed normally.

“Oh, titmouse, titmouse,” he said. “My sister named you well.”

Abe struggled to catch his breath before dissembling.

“Your sister? What are you talking about? And why should this sister know me or name me thus?”

“Hmph. Don't you remember me, titmouse? I remember you. You sat in front of my sister's cabin on a stool plucking birds. You were covered in turkey feathers. It was the day I came with my friends to collect her and bring her up to the mountain peaks. She would not come. She was not ready. Not yet.”

Not yet. The words came loud to him. They rang in his ears more intensely than the revelation that Redhand knew who he was.
Not yet. Not yet.
That could only mean that Marian was still alive. He sat back against the bench of the cab taking in the revelation.

“And you, married, titmouse? So quickly? She'll be surprised to hear that. After your eternal pledge.” Edward Redhand chuckled then halted the wagon once more. “Come. Get out. From here, we go on horse and on foot.”

Dozens of conflicting emotions ran through Abe's body, making him both shaky and confused. He was exhausted, disoriented, terrorized, relieved, overjoyed, guilty, anxious, and irritated. In frustration, he asked, “Why do you keep calling me titmouse? Why does she call me titmouse?”

The Cherokee alighted from the wagon while the slaves unhitched the team and secured Hart. Redhand mounted one of the horses. His men loaded whatever provisions remained on the other. “The titmouse,” Redhand said, “is a harmless little bird. It has a tuft on its head, like the hair under the cap you always wear.”

Abe mounted Hart. His eyes smarted with embarrassment and hurt although he fought not to show it. “So. Your sister finds me harmless and small, is that it?”

“No. It is for the other thing.”

By now, Abe was exceedingly annoyed. “What other thing?” he asked sharply. Redhand raised an eyebrow at his impatience. “The titmouse has a certain call,” he said. “It begins loudly and then fades away so that he may trick his enemies into thinking he has flown away. In the stories we tell our children, he is a deceiver who aids a great witch.”

“I don't understand.”

The other man sighed in the way fathers do when young sons are stubborn or thick.

“The titmouse is a liar,” he said. “She is calling you a liar.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly, the earth opened and swallowed up the mortified soul of Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar. His spirit descended deep inside the mountain into a fiery pool of shame, becoming smaller and smaller while what was left of him climbed higher up the mountain toward the sun. Hart grew restless sensing his rider's diminishment. Abe's legs went limp around him. The horse whinnied in a way that was mournful, distressed. After a time of riding in silence, the only sounds about them the movements of the horses and slaves who walked behind, for even the birds and the creatures of the wood were still, Redhand unexpectedly took pity, although perhaps his pity was more greatly extended to the horse carrying a man whose spirit had left him than the husk who rode him.

“When she calls you titmouse, she laughs,” he said. “It is not said in anger.”

Abe's head snapped up. His back, though suffering a world of penitential weight, went rigid as his soul returned to it. He asked Edward Redhand the only thing that mattered. “Where is she?” The Cherokee shrugged. Then beneath the bowels of the earth, the mouth of hell opened. Hell itself belched into the atmosphere the scent of all the exhalations of the multitude who writhed within its tortures. It was the scent that sprung from the pit where what molten rubber could be scraped or shoveled had been dumped.

Abe examined the pit for depth and breadth. Dusk came but the moon was full and there was plenty of light at first. Abe was shown where homes had been abandoned to escape the stench of the black gum puddles the mountain sun had made of that miracle substance before which the financial geniuses of the northern cities had bowed. Cherokee women wept, pointing to ruined gardens and putrid streams. Children scowled at him as he passed. Abe was humbled and stricken with fresh guilt. He asked Edward Redhand to whom he should appeal for forgiveness. Redhand informed him their
ghigua
,
their Beloved Woman, would accept his remorse.

After the horses were relieved and put up for the night, he was taken to a place a short distance apart from the village. A great cloud descended over the mountain, making it difficult to see the way. Edward Redhand and two other men, by their dress and ornament Cherokee of some stature, led him bearing torches that he might see through the thick mist. Still, he stumbled. They came to a cave and halted. The torchbearers entered first, then gestured him to follow. Deep inside the cave down a long corridor of stone was a round, open space. A figure there beckoned him to approach. He complied. Drawing closer, he could see by its shape the figure was female. She sat on a kind of throne made of interlocking tree limbs. Her breasts were barely covered by a gaping, sleeveless robe the color of milk. Her head was down but her hair was dressed so that it stood out on its ends like rays of light. Lit torches were placed in sconces set in a semicircle behind her. Through the gray-and-purple darkness, they were like stars set around the moon. Her head lifted as he approached and he saw she wore a mask, like that of a sorcerer. It was in the shape of a beast he did not know, which unnerved him. When he reached her, he bowed from the waist.

“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

A
be 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.