An Undisturbed Peace (21 page)

“In the meantime, Lulu's life was spared but her once-beautiful­ face was ruined as was her body. Jacob was most kind to her. He sat with her, keeping watch. He fed her. He changed her dressings and bathed her too. Of course, I was conflicted over this. He had little time for me. I was young. I was jealous, bitterly so. Every minute he spent with her I spent weeping, tearing my clothes, or beating whatever objects were close at hand with my fists out of frustration and rage. But I also shared his guilt. If he had stayed with her, if I had not encouraged Billy Rupert to court me as a way to disguise our love from the world, Lulu would not have caught that man's brutal eye. When Jacob said to me, ‘If we had parted and this happened to you, would you not want me to take care of you?' I had to say yes. So I buried my jealousy and took to visiting her in her sick room, to bringing her presents of flowers and the little sweet cakes Daniella made. In this odd way, in looking after her, our victim, Jacob and I grew closer still.

“After Billy Rupert's body was discovered, there were only theories of what had killed him, thanks to the degradation of his flesh. Only Jacob, the warriors, the medicine man, and I knew the truth. None of us would tell. My people loved me. Several of the men had known Lulu well enough to be grateful for Jacob's revenge. We were safe. But here's what happened. Lulu's body recovered, but her mind did not. As soon as she could walk, she went to the river and got herself killed, ripped apart by man or beast, at least that's what everyone thought. It made sense. No woman used to life in those parts would walk out in the dark, with no weapon, no protector. It was as if she didn't care about herself anymore. Didn't care whether she lived or died, and death found her.

“Jacob grieved for her. He felt her hideous end came from his hands. I tried everything I could to dissuade him, to bring him out of himself, but he sank deeper and deeper into a dark and terrible void of regret. He loved me still. He clung to me. There was no question of that. We loved as passionately as always we had, but there was no lightness to it, no sweet joy, instead there was a solemn tenderness, a grave, affectionate need that was satisfied only by an ecstasy washed in tears.”

Marian paused for a long while. Abe considered the differences, large and small, in the story she told him and the one Daniella had told him nights before. It occurred to him that the events in question had happened a very long time ago, that it was natural they should change with time and the telling. The love affair of Marian and Jacob had become legend among her people and legend was often a shifting thing. But here he was receiving a firsthand account, the best he'd ever get. For all his malcontent, he found himself demanding more.

“What happened then that Jacob wound up in Chota without your forgiveness?”

“Oh! He confessed!”

“Yes, Daniella told me. It was an act of honor. You blamed him for that?”

“Hmph. How hard is it to understand? The thing of it was, he didn't need to. No one was going to betray us. Life would have gone on. My mother was so impressed with his selfless care of her maid, she spoke of freeing him, which would have cleared the obstacle for us to marry. But his guilt and grief got the better of him. In a fit of misery, he confessed. His breaking point coincided with a great General Council of all the clans in Chota, during which matters vital to the nation were discussed. A vote was to be held on entry into the war the Americans fought against the British and their allies, the Creeks. I believe you would know it as the War of 1812. While the clans argued, Jacob painted his face for mourning, chanting a prayer older than the Earth itself. He dressed in the Cherokee clothes he wore in my auntie's day, in that time before he came to the plantation of my father. He wore the decorations he'd won as a boy in the annual games. Then, in the midst of the war vote, he burst into the Council House. There he confessed to the murder of Billy Rupert and demanded punishment. As soon as word came to me of his betrayal of our vows of silence, I ran to the Council House and threw myself at the mercy of my people as well, confessing my own part in the murder of Billy Rupert, which was greater than his. Jacob denied I was even present. I called him a liar and told the world of our love.

“You can imagine the riot that erupted. For two days our case was discussed. The warriors who had protected us were released from their oaths. But Jacob had got to them somehow. They supported his story, that he acted alone. I was infuriated. I repudiated my clansmen. I vowed if they did not accept my version of the facts, I would leave my clan forever, to live alone in the foothills until Jacob might be free.

“In short, I was ridiculous. No one believed me. Jacob was taken under the protection of Chota, because he was considered a hero for having rid the world of Billy Rupert. He resided in a stockade, where he would live until he could be sent into battle, to the front, which was the only way one who has taken a life could be redeemed. Twice a day during his confinement there, he wrote letters to me, begging my forgiveness. For some reason, they alienated me yet more from him, perhaps because they touched my heart and threatened to weaken my resolve to abandon my clan and make my own life in the foothills. In the end I realized, before I could do that, I must see the love of my life one more time. I decided I would be cold to him, to put my own wall between us rather than merely suffer the one he had made. I went to the stockade to visit him, but not before stoking my anger over his betrayal. I was prepared to be cruel. I told him I was leaving. He asked where I would go. ‘I need to know,' he said, ‘so I can find you when I have killed an enemy of the people and been set free.' I turned my back on him. As I left him, I called back that it was not necessary for him to know. Because he had broken our pact of silence, he was a cursed man. He would surely die.

“What demon held me in his grip that I spoke so? I regretted my words almost immediately. Yet, I left Chota and my people. I found no peace. I wandered the Cherokee world. My spirit fluttered about, halved, rootless, unable to achieve rest. I was in a state of complete wretchedness and then I heard from a passing stranger, a member of the paint clan who happened upon my lonely camp, that Jacob had died in the battle of Horseshoe Bend. The death he described was an ugly one, but it was also the death of a champion. Major Ridge's men had stolen canoes to bring our warriors across the water and into battle. Jumping in the first of them, Jacob made a solitary foray against the Creek lines, ahead of all the others. Once on land, he shrieked in the bravest, most bloodcurdling manner, and ran with glorious speed into a storm of knives and arrows. His courage, I was told, served as an inspiration to his war mates. His very name became a war cry and whatever Red Stick died that day died with Jacob's name in his ears. But it was unlikely he killed any enemy himself. A great irony, no? And this is what I thought true until the moment you told me he was alive in Chota and living with Lulu who, according to you, had been miraculously restored to him.”

She sighed yet again musing on all that had happened in the lives of three young people so many years ago. “Later on, no one would tell me that he lived because I had said that he would die but even more because Jacob himself would not allow it. Do you know why he ran so fatefully into that barrage of Creek death? He told me in a letter just last week. He said he was sworn to give me what my heart desired. If I thought he should die, he would give me that terrible wish and in a way that would make me proud. My gods, my gods. When I heard that …” She smiled and shook her head. “I guess we both have had too much pride.”

Her story was done. She remained quiet for a time, enough time for Abe to absorb her history, to realize once again that he'd never had a chance with her. Unlike occasions in the past, he felt neither jealous nor resentful. Surely his brief life with Hannah had something to do with the mitigation of his feelings. But more likely it had to do with acknowledging his inability to measure up to the exploits and fiery emotions of a Jacob or, for that matter, a Marian.

Abe halted Hart and told her they would rest awhile. He helped her descend from the wagon bed. She asked that he pass her her walking stick that she might hobble a ways apart to relieve herself and wash up in a nearby stream. When she returned, they ate a little of the cornmeal cakes that had been packed for them and watered Hart after he finished grazing. They spoke little during their short repast. Too much had been divulged already. What conversation passed between them was inconsequential, confined to speculations about the duration of their trip, whether the clouds ahead indicated rain, and the like.

At last they approached Chota. The quiet between them deepened. Marian's back arched, her neck strained as she studied the horizon looking for landmarks along a route to a place she had not visited for decades. Nature had had her way with certain trees and rock formations. Unfamiliar growth had replaced or obscured them. For these reasons, once they were upon Chota, it took her by surprise. There was a turn in the road, the crumbled buildings of the old town appeared, and she gasped. Her hands flew to her chest, where they joined as if she were in an act of prayer. Her breath came hard and fast. From somewhere in her throat a high-pitched whine, a sound not entirely human, emanated. To Abe's ears, it seemed to sing “
Jacob, Jacob, Jacob
,” and then they were within the town and in the distance the man himself could be seen leaving his house, throwing his body across the porch.

As they drew closer, the whine at Marian's throat rose up and flew out of her mouth, crashing into the sweet mountain air with the piercing majesty of an eagle's cry. She grabbed at Abe's shoulder from behind. She shouted to him, “Stop! Stop! I would walk to him!”

So Abe stopped and helped her out of the wagon while Jacob slowly lumbered toward them, step by painful step, his arms lifted and spread wide for her, even the shortened, crooked one. “My love!” he cried. “My love!”

She sobbed and hobbled toward him, crying out alike, “Jacob! Jacob!” At last, they reached each other. Tears coursed down their cheeks. Her hands went up to his ruined face and she kissed it all over while he gathered her in close to him with such hungry, aching intimacy that Abe could not watch, and turned away.

EXODUS

Greensborough, Where Debts Are Paid

B
efore Abe set out for Greensborough the next morning, Marian left the house to immerse herself seven times in the river as a gesture of thanksgiving and as purification to prepare for the new life she'd wrenched from the clenched fist of fate. While he waited for her to return that he might bid her fare-thee-well, Jacob made him breakfast. Abe had spent the night in the bed of the wagon rather than restrain the lovers' reunion by his presence. He moved the wagon twice to pull it far enough apart from the noise of them that he might get some rest. When they weren't moaning and, at intervals, screeching, they sobbed, laughed, sang. Even on his wedding night, Abe hadn't made such a racket. Understandably, he was both intimidated and sleep-deprived afterward. His conversation with Jacob was stunted by tired bones and an envious heart.

“We are indebted to you, young sir,” he said. “Last night, in our joy, we blessed the day you rode up to my lady's cabin. If you had not been taken with her, you would not have told the great lie that led us here, to this moment of sublime delight.”

Abe had no desire to be reminded of his great lie, much less frame an acceptance of gratitude for it. “Don't be indebted. Please. Don't be,” he said, his irritation, which Jacob misinterpreted for modesty, leaking through his words. The slave's good eye widened with surprise as he thump-tapped over to him, a bowl of grain cereal softening in hot milk in his unharmed hand, a large silver spoon tucked between his bad arm and his side. “Here you go, sir,” he said, putting the bowl and spoon in front of him. “This'll start you off good on your journey.” He sat down in a chair next to him, put his elbows on the table, and cradled his chin in his hands. He smiled, nodded. “You like it?” Abe considered himself fortunate that the man sat with the unmarked side of his face toward him. Even so, the white of his hair, the lines around his handsome eye and mouth underscored that if Marian was older than Abe, Jacob was again older than she. It disconcerted Abe to think that he'd been unable to compete with the ghost of an old man. Ha-Shem, get me out of here, he thought. I want to be home again in the arms of my pretty wife with hair dark red like autumn leaves. Jacob had not quit staring at him.

“Yes, yes, I like it well enough,” Abe said finally to put an end to that happy smile and nodding head. Putting a hand on the tabletop. Jacob hauled himself up. “Good. Now I'll make you something to take with you for your journey. For my lady, I've put up birds I haven't cooked in years! Ha, ha! Cold quail and white potatoes should do you well. I'll pack some beans in a tin vessel also, if you've a mind to cook over a fire at night.”

Abe surprised himself. “Wait,” he said. “What will happen for the two of you now? Will you stay here?”

“Ah, That is a good question, very good. Personally, I would like to leave, to go to Echota, where my lady can live with more comfort. Or perhaps near her brothers and mother. She will not admit it, but I know she loved living in her cave in the mountains, surrounded by her people. She'd been without them for so long, you see. But first, I must convince her.”

“Why does she need convincing?”

He shrugged, then tilted his head left and right like a rabbi who ponders a prickly distinction of the law.

“To tell you the truth, it's hard to get her to think of going anywhere. Her family would like her back in the mountain place. But she won't go. She says her mother blames me for the death of her father because my actions led to Chief Redhand's final miseries. I would not be welcome there. Her mother will never free me. If we go there, I will live as a slave again.

“Now, if we go to Echota, she fears Billy Rupert's mother will hear of it and take revenge, even though our law prohibits blood vengeance there. She says it doesn't matter that the Ruperts won the chief's property by blessing of the white man's court, the mother will still want my death. My lady Dark Water believes any agreement with the whites is as light as smoke. She trusts none of them. Except you! Ha, ha!”

Abe doubted that, but he answered Jacob's lopsided half grin with a weak one of his own.

“I suspect you have your ways of swaying her, Jacob.”

“I have arguments, absolutely. My lady Dark Water doesn't know Chief John Ross, for one, the man who has been most kind to me. She lumps him in her mind with Rich Joe Vann, Major Ridge, and even Stand Watie. She thinks them cruel, selfish men. Now, why does she do this? She does it because these are the men who have led the people out of the old ways and into the habits of the whites. To her, they are all the same, traitors to the ancestors. I tell her Chief John Ross is different from the others. Whatever he does, he does to save the land and the people on it. Much of what he does, he does with a sad heart, even when it comes to men like me, to black men, to slaves. He believes in the old ways of having slaves. Do you know how it was back then, before the white man came?”

“No, Jacob,” Abe said. “I barely know what goes on today.”

“Ah! In the old days, the Cherokee treated their slaves fairly. It was nothing like the slavery you see today. Free man and slave worked together side by side, not one holding a whip while the other labored beneath it. They married together if they wished. They did not enslave by the color of a man's skin. Their slaves were conquered nations, Creek or Seminole, Iroquois. After a time, slaves might be ransomed, or freed out of affection or respect for deeds of loyalty and bravery. To be a Cherokee slave was not as good as being adopted by the people, but slaves were not chattel in the same way black men are under the whites. For Chief John Ross, this slavery by race is an evil thing. He does it because it is one more way of living to force the whites to see the Cherokee as equals. Then perhaps they would stop trying to push us out of the land and across the great river. Men like Rich Joe Vann, they find the white man's way more … more … comfortable. They like to hate the black man. It suits them. It is in their nature. Oh!”

Jacob's hand suddenly cupped his ear.

“List! My lady returns. She sings her way home.”

Marian's voice came to them in the lilt of birdsong riding the back of a balmy breeze, warm and buoyant. The two men left the house to stand on the front porch and watch her approach. Seeing them, she waved, smiling brightly as she shuffled along more gracefully than in the past, but still leaning heavily on her stick. She carried the cloth she'd brought to dry herself and in it she'd placed the bandage that had been on her foot, which now sported a moccasin to her second foot's short, fringed boot. It was the first time Abe had seen her injury unbound. Her ankle was misshapen, bent outward in a peculiar way, while at the heel, the soft skin of the moccasin bowed inward, indicating a chunk of flesh was missing there. From the looks of things, he wondered if she'd ever be whole again. Unable to bear the thought of Marian damaged in this manner, a manner he found particularly vile when he recalled the glorious goddess of the foothills who'd first invaded his heart, Abe felt a powerful hand pressing against his back, pushing to get him beyond her and on the road to home. His role in her mutilation was almost too much to contemplate.

The lovers meanwhile limped past him to nuzzle cheeks, noses, and lips. When they were sated more or less, they turned about to face him while holding hands as if the idea that they might stand near each other and not touch was unthinkable. Regarding them, Abe's eyes welled, although he did not understand exactly why. Too many emotions pulled and shoved within him, stealing his breath. If he did not get apart from these two and very soon, he might suffocate.

“Well, I suppose it's time for me to depart.” His voice squeaked, which humiliated him. “I should get my horse.”

“I'll get him for you.”

Jacob turned to make his way toward the barn where the livestock was kept before Abe had a chance to dissuade him. He was alone with Marian. He could not look her in the eyes. He studied the horizon instead.

“It looks the weather will hold up today, don't you think?” he said in as bright a tone as he could muster.

“Yes, you should have a good day to travel.” She came closer to him, put her hand on his arm. “My friend, I want to thank you for everything you've done for us, for me. I don't know what the future will be for Jacob and me, but at least we have one now.” She sighed. “I was a broken person before. Today, I am complete. My greatest wish for you, our benefactor, is that you find with your wife the unbreakable bond my love and I share. If there is ever anything we can do for you, we shall move mountains to do so.”

Abe had no words for her. Jacob arrived with Hart in hand. After packing up and hitching him to the wagon, Marian of the foothills' peddler looked hard and long at the couple standing on their porch, arm in arm, leaning into each other, each with a hand raised in fare-thee-well. He waved also, then turned his back on them with some sadness, thinking he'd never see them again. In his heart, he wished them well. Hannah waited for him. He would return to her with renewed zeal to forge a true union between them. The shadow of old love would not diminish the bright promise of the present.

In good time, he came to the place where the litter bearers had left them to travel alone to Chota. He unhitched Hart, saddled him up, and continued on, leaving the wagon behind as prearranged. It felt good to be free of that encumbrance, good to be astride the horse again. He tapped his heels against Hart's belly. They picked up a trot, then a canter.

It was a hot ride. Over the two weeks he'd been in the high country, sun-drenched, heavy air had taken hold in the mountain valleys along his route. Hart foamed up several times a day. They took frequent rests to cool him off, respite Abe was grateful for himself. Great patches of fog obscured their trail, forcing them to wait until it lifted. They rested near cool streams, watered and bathed under gentle waterfalls. Every so often, a putrid scent drifted to them on humid air. Invariably, it emanated from some rubber object, now melted and in a state of malodorous decay, discarded by whoever needed to plain get rid of it and then far away. Abe worried in what state he'd find the family business.

The third day of his trek, they encountered a mass of violent thunderstorms so dangerous and dense, he decided to alter their route. He headed farther south than he needed just to get away from them. A bit lost, he looked for the worn thoroughfares of the low, rolling foothills. Before long, he located the common route on the eastern side of the Unicoi, the one established by the Cherokee ancestors and used since that time by traders, armies, miners, settlers, and adventurers. Its terrain was beaten into a civilized hospitality, free of rocky patches and other natural obstructions. Abe breathed relief. They walked on. Things went smoothly enough until they were near a branch in the road that offered a choice between yet farther south and due west or east. He spied a great cloud of dust at the horizon advancing toward him. Hart raised and tossed his head at it. To be on the safe side, Abe took him a ways inside the tree line in case whatever it was that caused such a disturbance of dirt and debris was something they'd rather not encounter hair to hide. The cloud grew larger the closer it got. Abe tied a kerchief around his nose and mouth to keep from coughing. The horse stretched his neck high, trying to catch a draught of clean air. Abe petted the root of his mane in long, firm strokes to steady him. They waited.

A wagon train approached. There were ten, maybe twelve conveyances. Many people, both on horseback and on foot, walked with them. The wagons were large, drawn by teams of four and six, and burdened with possessions. Buckets, farm implements, chairs, mattresses were tied to the outside of the frames, and inside the beds were larger, heavier items, such as trunks, wardrobes, breakfronts, even spinets and stoves. Children and old ones perched on top of the furnishings, also pregnant women and the sick, whoever could not keep up the pace on foot. There were also goats, cows, squawking chickens and geese in cages. It struck Abe that here was a group leaving well-established homes for western parts with no intent of returning. During the days when he'd fantasized of going west with Marian, his constant concern was how to strip themselves down to spare essentials for ease of motion over unknown ground. Yet these people traveled in a completely opposite fashion. Everything they valued was with them. Not only that, they were Indians.

Even without their copper complexions and angled cheekbones, their thick black hair, their chiseled noses and mouths, he would have known them as Indians. They had the quiet, sober aspect of most Indians he had known. While some of the children tussled and played together, the adults were uniformly silent, grave. He wasn't sure they were Cherokee, although the route they took was established by the Cherokee eons ago. Their clothes, though European, had flourishes that signified their origins, certain feathers and colors of beads as ornament, the earbobs of men, the cut of their shirts, the head coverings of the women, that sort of thing. It wasn't that Abe was an expert in such matters, but he'd spent enough time with the Cherokee to notice subtle differences. He wondered if they might be Creek or Chickasaw. What was not questionable about them was that they'd left their homes with time to pack. If they were in exile, it was a voluntary one, heading to the Mississippi, he figured, and across it in accordance with the new Indian Removal Act. He wondered next if these peoples were cowards or lacked the attachment to the land that Marian had. On the contrary, they might be the ones Isadore spoke of, the clever ones who wished to claim from the new territory the best it had to offer while taking with them the best they had acquired before the US govern­ment drove the rest of their kind into the West in penury and under the gun. Abe kept Hart quiet and under cover. To impose himself on these solemn people felt akin to bursting into a synagogue with trumpets and drums on a high holiday.