An Undisturbed Peace (9 page)

“It is old Chota, which, as you can see, was largely destroyed by the settler troops in their war against the British and then finished off after the settlers murdered Corn Tassel, that chief of Cherokee who came after Oconostota. After that, the clans moved their capital to Echota, or New Chota, but they left me here to care for the sacred graves of their dead. Yes, everyone is here. All their remains or some token thereof if the bones are elsewhere. Old Hop, Standing Turkey, Dragging Canoe, Stalking Fox. They're here, each one of 'em.”

“Then how is it you live like this?” Abe's hand gestured over all the fine objects in Jacob's possession.

“The Cherokee love me for the things I have done. They bring me gifts often.”

“And what have you done?”

The handsome half of Jacob's face smiled. He refilled their glasses, then shrugged modestly. “Oh,” he said, “there are the things I did for Dark Water and the things I have done since for the nation, both in battle and here in Chota.”

“What are all these things?”

“Ha, ha! You wish to hear the story of Jacob of Chota, do you? Ha, ha!” His laughter was at first sharp, then trailed off into a long, rolling sound with more than a touch of madness to it. He turned full face to Abe. The mad, rolling sound and the man's disfigurement combined to send a cold sweat down the peddler's spine. “Sit back, young sir, and I will tell you!”

Despite his fear, which increased with every swallow of the drink the mercurial Jacob imbibed, Abe's mind and heart burned to know how the fate of this pitiful person and that of his Marian were intertwined. He sat back.

Jacob

I
was born a slave,” Jacob said, “but not to the Cherokee. Ah, no. For them, I was a prize of war.” The man's chin rose, as if this were a point of pride for him. “It was during the years of Dragging Canoe's war, which you might know as the Chicka­mauga. My mother belonged from the age of thirteen to a Georgia planter who was also my father. It was just the three of us on the farm along with his sister whose husband was dead, all of us working the rows and bringing in harvest when the season came. We lived as one family. Though my mother and I were slaves, no one remarked upon it. It escaped my notice at that tender age, out there in the backwater. I know my heart has always been different from other slaves. I lack the fear most have. And the humility.

“One day, Mother and I were walking to a neighboring farm with a basket of pies, as a holiday was coming and it was our gift. Usually, we would go visiting with our master, my father, him toting his rifle, but that day he was occupied with fixing a blade of his plow and we went alone. We walked unhurried through field and woods. I was just a tot and my legs short. Mama had no desire or need to carry me. We felt safe walking slowly there, at a pace I could manage. I recall we sang. What was the tune now? Oh, yes, ‘High Frolickin' Tulips,' which was a ditty our master, my father, made up while in his cups. It was a funny song, and we liked to sing it. Little did we know that while we sang all the woods were swarming with Corn Tassel's men on the lookout to avenge his murder by a party of homesteaders from east Tennessee.”

Abe interrupted. “Who is Corn Tassel?” he asked.

Jacob regarded him as he might an idiot child.

“Why, I just told you! Chief of all the Cherokee, that's who! An honest man, with no hunger for blood, respected by all, murdered by homesteaders under a flag of truce! Did they teach you nothing before you set out into Cherokee land?”

Abe made a small, noncommittal gesture with his open palms. He didn't see why he should be expected to know the name of a chief who'd been dead decades but neither did he want the man to stop talking.

Jacob sighed with dismay and continued. “Looking back, I wonder what was in my mother's mind. If she didn't know about Corn Tassel's murder, she must have known where she lived. It was an untamed land of no constant borders, traveled by greedy white men, as well as Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw too. Nearly everyone was seeking some sort of revenge—white men against Indian, Indian against white. How could she take a child on such a jaunt in such a time with nary a care? There is no answer. The point is we walked straight into the arms of a war party whilst singing, ‘
O frolickin' tulip, where have ye been?
' One moment we were laughing, playing at nonsense, and the next we stared at the tips of dozens of arrows pointed from every direction at our vital parts. The men who drew them were not like those gents at Echota who sent you to me. No, they were warriors on horseback, both their mounts and their bodies painted in symbols of protection and for the drawing of blood. Some had scalps dangling from their war belts, fresh scalps dripping life.”

“How terrifying for you,” Abe offered. The other man shrugged.

“It happened long ago,” he said, as if he were well over any such shocks. “Life is brutal in the calmest of times. In war, more so. But when you think on it, really not so very much.”

There followed a quiet between them. Jacob seemed lost in recollection. Abe regretted interrupting him when he'd only just begun his story. Luckily, the man heaved a great sigh and continued.

“As I thought about it over the years, I realized it was the color of our skin that saved our lives. Had we been white and free, we might have been murdered, mutilated on the spot. Instead, we were seized as a commodity, sent to the back of the war party with its booty of horses and mules to be herded into Cherokee towns for disposition among the worthiest of them. Yes, for all that happened since, I've come to judge that the single moment in my life when it was good to be a slave.

“My mother was given to the bird clan and I to the deer. We were separated by clan and distance but could still see each other from time to time, at meetings of the General Council or at the annual games. In the beginning I missed my mother and wept for her. But if I could talk today to that poor child I was, I'd tell him, ‘Stop your whining, it's not the worst slave arrangement! For all of that, you're a lucky chap!' I was the houseboy for a great lady of the clan, you see, a widow woman who had no children and grieved over it. I was petted and spoiled, as much as any young lad might be who'd been born by right and privilege to a grand station in life. After some years, when by chance I would meet the mother of my blood, I treated her with arrogance, which was a great sin, I admit, and no doubt the author of my cruel fate. Unlike me, she'd not been treated well by her masters, who'd worked her like a beast. I was proud and forgot, in fact, that I too was a slave, which forgetfulness turned out to be my undoing.

“The clans had gathered in this very place, old Chota, for a General Council. This was in former days, just before women left the corn to sit at spinning wheels, when Cherokee men had no business in the fields, and all a boy's talents were honed for the skills of his clan, for hunting, and for war. At the games, boys were tested. I was allowed to compete against sons of all the Cherokee as a privilege extended to my adoptive mother and I did so with a special passion, to honor her, whom I loved, and to prove I was the true son of her spirit. There was a footrace I won and at the finish line was my blood mother. She had become bent and ugly with hard work while I had grown proud and strong. She put out her arms to me to congratulate me on my victory. I was ashamed to acknowledge her in front of the princes of my clan. I curled my lip and nodded my head to her, but very slightly, and walked on to be embraced by the cheering members of the deer clan. I can still see how her face went blank, how she shrunk into her clothes. It pained me, but I made my heart hard. I told myself not to care.”

For a time, Abe ceased to listen to Jacob, who rattled on about his boyhood achievements, his honored place in his adopted mother's household. Instead, he studied the man's ruination, considering it a just price for cruelty to a mother who had lost him through no fault of her own. Honor thy father and mother. The fifth of the Ten Commandments. Commandments one through four were about man's obligations to Ha-Shem. The fifth was the first about his obligations to his fellow man. It was that important. His own mother had sold him to Uncle Isadore, but did he stop honoring her? Of course not, although lately his letters to her had been few and far between. He must fix that, he thought, at the earliest opportunity. His ear returned to Jacob.

“I achieved manhood. From the time I was fourteen my desires were fierce. At the touch of a green leaf, the caress of a warm breeze, I became frenzied. I needed a wife. My deer mother noticed. That was when she bought Lulu for me.” Jacob paused. He stared into space a bit, then poured himself yet another drink.

“Lulu. Poor Lulu. She was a girl fresh from the islands, hijacked by our warriors from traders bringing her inland to a rich settler who'd purchased her off the block in Charleston. She wanted me no more than she wanted to swim with snakes. The hillsides frightened her because nowhere could she see the sea. She desired only her mother back on the sugar plantation. For my own reasons, neither did I want to marry her. I told my clan mother I was insulted. I who had won prizes at the games, I who could run faster than the fastest of the deer people, should marry a slave! A slave who was no one! Our children would belong to no clan! My clan mother spoke to me then, plainly, without softening her words. Although her eyes were full of water, she shed no tears as she said, “Jacob, my love. You are as dear to me as my favorite horse, as the dog that warms my feet during my winter's sleep. I have protected and fostered you, it is true, because you are dear to me. But you are not of my blood, you share not my clan nor are you my heir, who is my sister. You are, alas, a slave because that is what the Great Beings made you. Forgive me if my favor has led you to think otherwise. You will marry who I tell you to marry.” That day was a misery of my life, believe me. One that pains me still. At first I thought to rebel. Then Lulu was brought to me and I found her winsome. My lust overruled my pride.

“So. Lulu and I were wrapped in blue blankets and brought before the Council fire. I gave her a basket of deerskins and she gave me a basket of corn. Our blankets were removed. We were wrapped in a single white one and then everyone feasted. Time went by as it does. We lived with my deer mother and served her in the same way others served and revered an honored mother. We lived like everyone else. My wife was the only external sign that I was not free. We had no children. Some said it was because Lulu's womb went sour against me. But I think it was my seed that had no wish to sprout in her. Obviously, Lulu and I never twined our spirits but we came to accept each other. At first I thought that was all a man could ask.”

Jacob paused, his breath came slowly. Abe wondered if he should prod him to continue. He looked to be lost in the past, in that marriage to Lulu, perhaps stewing in regrets, but just as he was about to offer his own thoughts on love, such as they were, the man picked up the tale.

“We were married ten years when my foster mother died of the smallpox. It was a great shock to everyone. First because no one had died of the white man's disease in many years and second because it was only she and four others who came sick. All of them were sent to a rocky place high in the mountains to die, lest they infect hundreds. My wife and I were also to go, to care for the sick until we died ourselves. But at last my clan mother proved her love for me. She insisted we stay with our village and at the proper time be given to her sister.

“All this came to pass. There was a day when news reached our town that everyone in the mountain place was dead and a party was dispatched to make sure they were buried and their place of death purified by fire. The next day, Lulu and I were packed up with the rest of my foster mother's belongings and taken on a journey to her sister, who had married a man from the wild potato clan. I wore a suit of European clothes and Lulu was in a typical serving girl's dress. Both costumes had been purchased from a trader for our presentation to our new owners to underscore our role and value. I, who was used to deerskins that brushed against the body like a second skin, hated them. Their fabric itched. They were hot. Each item was either too tight or too loose. It was the final blow to my honor. I cannot express to you the shame I felt to sit on the back of a wagon next to a sack of skins and pots, dressed up like a white man's doll, riding out of town under the cold gaze of my youth's companions, fellows I'd thought were my brothers if not by blood then at least by affection. To add to my suffering, Lulu sat beside me in tears, shaming me further.

“I was by then twenty and four years and while I could no longer ignore that I was a slave, I knew in my heart who I was and what I was worth. I was an expert hunter and my skill at running made me a favorite messenger among the people, even over the clan chief's son. My biggest dread was that I would be put to work for which I was not suited. Lulu, I know, was concerned her marriage to me might not be respected, that she might be prey to whomever we must now serve. Yet neither of us attempted to escape along our journey, nor did we speak of it in the night to each other. We knew if white men found us our fates could be far worse than anything we had experienced from the Cherokee. Several days passed as we traveled north by wagon, sticking to established roads, the old ones made by the Indian nations for trading with each other. It was a long and tedious route. At last we arrived at our new home. Two things about our new people were significant. The first is that they had one foot in the white man's world. The second is that they were parents to Dark Water.”

Without explanation, Jacob fell silent. Given his disabilities, he rose more gracefully than Abe thought possible, and left the room and then the house. Abe could hear him pace, thump-tap, thump-tap, thump-tap, back and forth across the front porch. He rose himself to lean against the open doorway and watch the slave maneuver across the length of the porch, then swivel on one leg and pace back in the opposite direction. The effect was disturbing, like a twirling magic lantern, a phantasma­goria where one Jacob appeared, handsome, vibrant, alive, and thoughtful, then at the swivel, the monster Jacob supplanted him, his body twisted, his features horrific, moribund. The flickering torchlight from the street heightened Abe's discomfort until he reached out and touched the man, placing a hand on his good arm to stop him. It surprised him to note that Jacob trembled beneath his frock coat. Looking into the man's good eye, he realized it was deep emotion and not some damage to the nerves that agitated him. Abe's mouth dried. He was about to discover details of his beloved's life that had been hidden from him. “Jacob,” he tried, “what happened between you and Dark Water's family?”

Jacob's eye had a faraway look. He turned toward Abe without speaking, without perhaps even seeing him.

“Ah, young sir. They loved me and then for a while they hated me. Because of her. Ah, everything is because of her.”

“Tell me.”

“Yes, yes, I will.” He sniffed, removed a handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose loudly, and wiped his face again. He glanced over at the place where Hart was tied to a post. “But we should put your horse up with mine. I think you will be staying the night.”

Impatient as he was for the history about to be revealed, Abe agreed. It seemed Jacob required activity to calm himself, and besides, Hart had stood quietly for a long time, a state that could not last much longer. He nibbled at the knot that held him and looked to be considering methods of escape. The men took him around the back of the house to a three-stalled barn, where a dappled horse was comfortably confined along with two goats. Jacob's horse and Hart made acquaintance peaceably while Abe stripped him of saddle and gear, brushed him a little, put him in a stall next to that of the dappled horse where Jacob had laid fresh hay, and filled a bucket with water. The two men watched a bit to see if any equine disagreement might erupt, and when it did not, they made their way back to the house. All the while, Jacob talked.