The Cherokee Rose, page 13
“Why don’t you ladies take a stroll, get inspired by the scenery,” Cheyenne said. “I’ll find refreshments. It’s long past lunchtime, and I know Ruthie can’t bear to miss a meal. It will be paradise. We’ll picnic in the garden, and I’ll pitch my ideas for the B&B’s grand opening.” Cheyenne pivoted and headed toward the house, her ponytail swinging and her slip dress swaying in the breeze.
Ruth felt a touch on her arm that was as gentle as it was brief. She looked up to find Jennifer watching her, as if she had heard Cheyenne’s understated dig, as if she understood how it felt to be constantly reminded you weren’t as good as somebody else. Ruth felt her skin warm with embarrassment—and maybe gratitude.
“Want to check out the old kitchen with me? It sounds like we have a common interest. I like my meals, too, the sweeter and richer the better.” Jennifer smiled, then walked ahead of Ruth toward the decaying building, making a path of parted stems for them both to tread.
Ruth followed, stooping to examine the outlines of a former vegetable and herb garden. A brown-backed box turtle showed its face and blinked at her. She watched it disappear behind a watercress leaf, then thrust her hand into the leaves, parting hedge mustard from shepherd’s purse. Four pairs of beaded eyes peered back at her—two turtles instead of one, tucked together like the twin hearts of the lopseed plant that grew around the exterior of the weathered cabin.
Jennifer pushed through lopseed stalks to enter the low-slung doorway. Ruth tripped over a threshold warped by the elements, righted her clog, and stumbled inside behind her. The cabin smelled like a pine forest after a rain: damp wood, wet moss, sodden earth, balsam. The walls were made of unpeeled log that had once been whitewashed. The floors were nothing more than raw packed earth. The windows were encrusted with dirt streaked by long-dried raindrops. The only pure shaft of light, dancing with dust and pollen, shone through the open doorway.
The first room was the largest of three, occupying the full front width of the cabin. This was the original cooking space, judging by its size and features. A massive chimney built of rocks rose against one wall. A hunk of tree trunk served as a mantel. Carved into the wood in the center of the trunk was a faded cross formed in the leaves of the tree of life. At the base of the chimney, a deep fireplace took up a third of the room. This had been the Hold family’s hearth, the place where their meals were prepared. An unfree person had probably worked here, or perhaps even lived here. A ruddy brick oven, a later addition, had been built into the opposite wall, surrounded by shelving fashioned from elm. But any cooking elements once stowed on those shelves—cast-iron pots or trivets or cooling stands—had been lost or sold away.
Jennifer lowered herself to the floor, sitting cross-legged. Ruth sat beside her, facing the open door to catch a breeze.
“Out of the frying pan, into the kitchen,” Jennifer said, fanning her face with a hand and grinning. “It’s sweltering, but incredible. To think people lived here centuries ago, cooked here, prayed here, shared their lives. Mary Ann Battis, the girl I’m looking for, could have sat where we’re sitting now, one day in the 1800s.”
Ruth looked at Jennifer for a long moment, at her dark, thoughtful eyes. She was suddenly aware of the sweet smell of Jennifer’s skin. Was that candy? In the silence, she could hear the sound of Jennifer’s breathing—steady, rhythmic, alive.
“The girl you’re looking for…” Ruth repeated.
Jennifer paused, tilted her head, and gave Ruth a look that began with curiosity and ended with a smile. “One of the girls I’m looking for. And I think it’s time you know that my friends back home call me Jinx.”
“Jinx?”
“Buy me a Coke.” Jinx grinned.
Ruth laughed out loud, remembering the childhood saying for when two people blurted out the same word at the same time, almost as if by magic.
The noise descended in a rush, sounding in Ruth’s ears. Shh, shh. It was coming from outside. Shh, shh. The river cane was whispering. Shh, shh. Come. Go back. Come. Go back. The rustling echoed in her eardrums, sounding like a voice that had traveled across a great distance.
And that’s when Ruth saw the girl.
She was fourteen, maybe fifteen, with long, awkward string-bean limbs, honeycomb-colored skin, and brilliant brown eyes. The girl’s hair hung to her back in a thick trunk of braid, tied off at the base with ribbon. She stood just beyond the cabin doorway in moccasin-covered feet, staring directly at Ruth. Ruth drew in a breath of shock as her heart sped to twice its resting rate. She felt waves of emotion wash over her as if by osmosis. Sadness, loss, longing, rage, and resentment, backlit by a sheen of love. As she stared at the vision, Ruth felt that she could be that young girl, that she was a helpless young teenager tossed again on the seas of her father’s reckless passions. And then she knew the girl before her had no mother because of someone’s criminal act. Ruth’s face felt flushed, and a line of sweat slowly spread to discolor the fabric of her headband. She closed her eyes, trying to swallow. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.
She blinked, opened her eyes, and looked again at the doorway to find the girl was gone…if she had ever been there.
Shh, shh.
She had never acknowledged the truth out loud.
Shh, shh.
“What’s wrong?” Jennifer said.
Ruth focused on breathing, in, out, and then put her mind to work at what it did best: obfuscating the threatening things she saw in her mind and rationalizing her feelings. She was exhausted and under stress. She hadn’t slept well on the road. And she had arrived at her destination to find an unpleasant surprise: her queen-bee summer-camp bunkmate, a person she had never been fond of, now owned the place she was supposed to be writing a feature story about. And witness to it all was a striking someone whom she might…Ruth didn’t finish that thought. It was as though she had careened into an adolescent anxiety dream. Of course she was seeing strange things.
The girl in the door was a trick of the eye, a trick of the light, a trick of her mind. Ruth had only to blink her eyes to make the girl disappear—just as she had for all those years with the memories of her mother, just as she had with the great loss that had hulled the seed of her life.
She looked up to find Jennifer watching with a look of concern and confusion.
“Jennifer…” Ruth started.
“Please, call me Jinx. What just—”
“Bon appétit, ladies!” Cheyenne’s voice chimed from the garden path. “Chop-chop!”
THIRTEEN
Adam had been working in his garden all morning, staking cornstalks, thumping pumpkins, and pulling weeds. The quarter of an acre in front of his cabin that he had devoted to his hobby kept him and more than a few neighbors in fresh produce all fall. The tomatoes Adam grew ranged from tiny grapes and romas to a purple, bulging heirloom variety planted from seeds saved by his mother and passed down from his grandmother. He and Sally usually chose a slow weekend to can the tomatoes in his shed with a college football game blaring in the background. Those jars, with their satisfying pops as they sealed, made for tasty pizza and spaghetti sauces come wintertime.
The heat had gotten to him hours ago despite the shade provided by his sunflowers, which stood like yellow umbrellas on stilts along the perimeter of the fence. Adam had stripped off his T-shirt to fling it across a stump by the woodshed. He took another swig from a water bottle that was sweating as hard as he was. The outdoor work soothed him, especially in a week like this, when everything seemed awry. The Hold House buyer was far from what he had expected. He thought he would be dealing with Mason Allen, who was tough but practical to the core—avaricious, certainly, but the devil Adam knew. Instead, he found himself tangling with a stranger—a sexy, snobby, gutsy stranger who seemed entranced by the place but for some reason had it in for azaleas. Adam shrugged into a smile. She was a puzzle, that one.
The telephone sounded inside his cabin. He wanted to ignore it but knew it must be Sally. She was at home on Wednesdays if she didn’t have a cleaning job, and she must have spotted him in the yard through the window of her trailer. Adam stood, the ache in his knees telling him it was past time to call it quits for the day anyway. He grabbed his damp shirt and water bottle, kicked off his Nikes, and walked inside his snug log home. Shaded by pine needles, the cabin was cool around him. It smelled like the coffee he had brewed that morning and left in the pot just in case—and like the pleasantly foreign scents of a stranger, the shampoo and lotion of his overnight renter, who had eaten cold cereal and left while he was out in the tent.
“Yep?” he said, holding the telephone to his ear.
“What are you doing out there in the heat of the day?”
“Sally. Are you spying on me again?”
“It’s not spying when we’re neighbors.”
“How’s Junior?”
“Napping. I know a thing or two about sunstroke, Adam Battis, and don’t think because you’re Black you can’t get it.”
“So you’re babysitting me now too?”
“Somebody has to, since your mama’s moved to Dalton and the whole town’s gone nuts over the sale of the Hold House. Now tell me. What’s going on over there? I know you’ve been to see her.”
Adam paused. “I did run into the new owner—her name is Cheyenne Cotterell—at the supermarket. She says she wants to operate a bed-and-breakfast and live here year-round. She also says you can keep picking fruit in the orchards.”
“That was your doing. Thanks for looking out for me. Did you tell her?”
“Tell her what?”
“Don’t play dumb. Did you tell her you hope to rent some land on the place and restore the cabin your grandmother grew up in?”
Adam sighed and took a gulp of water. “It didn’t come up.”
“You have to bring it up. Lord knows, you’ve got as much claim to that plantation as anybody else. More than anybody else. Mason just wanted to develop the property. And the new owner sounds like she just wants to run a business. You have roots here, Adam. You belong to the land.”
“This woman says she has roots, too, that she had ancestors on the plantation. Mason might have rented to me if I could have convinced him that having me run the orchards would have turned him a profit. But this one? No. She’s a romantic with a backbone. She doesn’t want anybody crowding in her dream.”
Sally was quiet for a moment. Adam imagined her biting the fleshy tip of her thumb, like she did when she was deliberating.
“And does she?” Sally finally came out with it.
“Does she what?”
“Does she have a history on the plantation? Because your grandparents—my grandparents, all of those old folks—said your own family was there going back generations.”
“I don’t know her history. I’m not even sure if she does.”
“When’s the last time you worked on your family history research?”
“I set that aside long ago. I told you that. I looked into it, called the Cherokee Nation enrollment office in Oklahoma and tried to see if any Battises were listed on the Cherokee Freedmen Rolls. They weren’t.”
“One phone call and you’re giving up? You haven’t rented out that cabin, slept in your tent, and saved twenty-five thousand dollars for nothing.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference now. The property is gone, and the buyer is in it for the long haul. Nobody cares if my ancestors lived there.”
“Somebody cares,” Sally said. “I guarantee it. You just don’t know who he—or she—is yet.”
* * *
*
Cheyenne had found a shady spot beneath a white peach tree. She spread out a patchwork quilt and busied herself preparing the picnic like a copper-toned Martha Stewart. She laid out china from the Hold House collection, corn muffins, a cake of butter, a fresh tossed salad, and vinaigrette dressing. She placed a pitcher of cool water on top of a tin tray and set out drinking glasses.
Ruth sat on the edge of the textile island, tucking her denim skirt around her calves. Jinx found a place nearby and sat quietly, watching her. Cheyenne knelt on a linen throw pillow.
“Thanks, Cheyenne,” Jinx said. “Looks good.”
“I can’t take all the credit. The basket was a welcome gift from someone in town.” Cheyenne nibbled at the crust of a muffin top, then placed it back on her plate and reached for her water glass.
Jinx spread butter and jam on a muffin, repeatedly glancing at Ruth, who was staring into the cane field and ignoring the attractive spread. “Are you okay, Ruth?” she finally asked.
“She’s right,” Cheyenne said. “You aren’t eating, Ruthie, and that isn’t like you.”
“You don’t know what I’m like,” Ruth said, abruptly switching her laser stare from the river cane to Cheyenne.
“I know you always used to dig right in at camp, like you were starved for a home-cooked meal. So much so that I assumed that father of yours couldn’t cook and wouldn’t hire someone who could.”
“You don’t want to get into commentary on eating habits with me, Cheyenne.” Ruth’s voice was laced with warning. “Not today.”
“What has gotten into you, Ruthie? We’re just trying to have a pleasant picnic.”
“I’m not thirteen anymore. Why the fuck do you keep calling me Ruthie?”
“Now that was uncalled for,” Cheyenne snapped. “What has gotten into you?”
“Ruth,” Jinx said, leaning across the quilt to touch the other woman’s bare elbow. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine.”
“We just met, I know, but this doesn’t seem…It was stifling in that cabin. You could be experiencing heatstroke. Do you need some water?” Jinx reached for the pitcher and poured the clear liquid into a glass. She held the glass out to Ruth, who took it without a word and placed it on the quilt beside her empty plate.
Cheyenne scoffed and spoke under her breath. “Try offering her an ice cream shake instead.”
“I’m happy with my size, Cheyenne,” Ruth said in a voice raised to emphasize Cheyenne’s pretended discretion. “And with my appearance, even though you never thought I should be.”
“So this is about looks? Still? Are we really reverting back to tenth grade, comparing our figures and fighting over who’s cutest? You never appreciated what I tried to do for you, Ruth. You’ve always resented my trying to help, as if it was a secret, your messed-up home life in Minnesota, and how much you needed to be accepted when you came down here in the summers. Do you think I would have spent so much time with you if our grandparents hadn’t been friends before your mother died? Honestly, it was charity.”
Ruth inhaled sharply, a shifting look of shock, hurt, and embarrassment crossing her features. She set her face and kept her cold stare on Cheyenne. “Was it charity, too, when I was holding your precious ‘Indian’ hair while you threw up your meals in the toilet every other day?”
“I do not have an eating disorder.”
“And I don’t have a weight problem.”
“You could have fooled me. Because you act like you carry the weight of the world on your poor Little Orphan Ruthie shoulders. We’ve all had hardships in life. When will you learn that losing your mother doesn’t give you license to be a class-A bitch?”
Ruth shot up, knocking over a jar of jam as she stood with one bare foot on the quilt and another on the wildflowers and prickly grass.
Jinx reached out a hand to help her regain her balance. Ruth sidestepped the touch, blindly aiming her feet at her clogs as she stumbled beyond the peach tree’s canopy.
“I don’t need this, and I don’t have to take it. Not anymore.” Ruth glanced quickly at Jinx, avoiding eye contact with Cheyenne. “I’m sorry,” she added for Jinx alone, and left.
* * *
*
The picnic was over. Jinx didn’t finish her food. She realized, too, given what she just heard, that Cheyenne had probably never intended to eat a full meal anyway. She looked at the empty spot where Ruth had been sitting and saw she had left her notebook behind. On the blue cover Ruth had drawn a stick-figure beaver with an impish smile and large thumping tail, posed playfully over the words: “Dam it!”
Jinx pressed her lips together, worried for Ruth. She picked up the notebook and pen clipped to its back cover and slipped both into her messenger bag. She helped Cheyenne pack up the picnic basket and carry the things into the house, said a polite goodbye, and started up her truck.
It felt like a week instead of a day since she had arrived in Georgia, Jinx thought as the truck idled in the Hold House lot. It felt like months since she had gotten a dressing-down by Deb Tom. The longer she spent in this place, the odder things seemed, and the more her research, Ruth’s arrival, and Cheyenne’s property purchase seemed like occurrences far beyond coincidence.
But what was she thinking? That they had been gathered here for a reason? And if so, by whom, and for what purpose?
Jinx had never considered herself superstitious. She trusted what she could read and analyze; she was a by-the-book chick. But sometimes she felt essences, or presences, that weren’t physically there—like the Cherokee travelers at Ross’s Landing, and the something askew in Aunt Angie’s house. And something like that—something strange that tapped into a sixth sense—had happened to Ruth in the missionary cabin that afternoon. Jinx was sure of it. Whatever Ruth had sensed or seen had been extraordinary enough to make Ruth freeze, to cloud her face with distress, to trigger feelings from the past that had erupted in an ugly fight with Cheyenne.
Jinx felt for Ruth, worried for Ruth, in a way that made her own heart go still. Ruth was now emotionally fragile and alone somewhere in these remote mountains. Where had Ruth gone? And would she come back? Jinx worried, too, that the three of them had started something that day—or something had started them. Maybe that something needed to be identified and finished, or the emotional storm that had been unleashed would take Ruth under. Three is the magic number, Cheyenne had said in the drawing room. That was true in the fairy tales of Western culture. But in the old world of Southern Indigenous medicine and power, four was the number of ritual magic. If Jinx, Ruth, and Cheyenne had already been called to the plantation, did that mean a fourth person was due to arrive?
