The Cherokee Rose, page 15
The cat appealed to her with its round jade eyes. Cheyenne backed up a step. Taking this as a sign, the cat bounded past her into the drawing room and leapt at the window, grasping a fat roach in its paw. The cat snapped the roach into its mouth, then went for one on the curtain hem. The scene was mortifying. The only saving grace was that no one else was there to see a feral feline dine on vermin in her parlor.
“Good kitty. Good, Sorbet,” she whispered to the animal as she grabbed her shoulder bag and ran for the door.
* * *
*
Ruth stepped over brittle twigs, looking at the faded buildings that once composed Camp Idlewood. Released from the Hold Plantation’s wrought-iron gates, she had headed blindly for the steep mountain road. After passing the abandoned fruit stand that had seemed dimly familiar, she had felt the mountainside rise beneath her tires. To the right, the road had offered breathtaking vistas where tourists gathered at pull-outs to gape at the misty valley below. And now she was here, at the place where she had spent ten successive summers between the ages of nine and eighteen.
The campus looked smaller now, its handful of Adirondack-style log structures scattered over five acres of cleared forestland. Fort Mountain State Park had purchased the land some time ago, and the buildings seemed to be in use as a crafts and nature center. Ruth made her way to the old dining hall, with its metal crank windows that slowly wound open. She breathed in the familiar smell of live pines and felt her clogs sink into the forest floor. She sat on the steps of the dining hall, tucking her denim skirt around her, peering beyond the campus clearing into the dense woods.
Since the early 1900s, Idlewood had been a tradition among Southern Black families with means, a place where girls imagined themselves as future debutantes and boys were expected to make connections that would last into the future. She had been viewed as a charity case and put in a bunk with Cheyenne Cotterell.
Ruth had not admitted to herself or anyone else that she knew the truth about her parents. So she couldn’t hate her father for stealing the joy in her life. Instead, she had settled on hating Cheyenne Cotterell. Cheyenne and her well-heeled Atlanta family with all the right marriages to other Black people in their “set.” Cheyenne with the colorful stories of a Cherokee ancestor that lent her genealogy an exotic twist. Cheyenne in her skinny pink tanks and J.Crew short shorts, her straight, penny-shiny ponytail doing its jaunty swing. Cheyenne with a gaggle of girls flocking around and a gang of boys gawking behind. Cheyenne and her fairy-tale existence.
Ruth remembered the first time she heard Cheyenne throwing up her grilled cheese and tomato soup in a stall of the bunk room—how satisfying it had felt to know Miss Princess found perfection only through self-abuse. She felt a twinge of remorse at the harsh thought now, but only a twinge. Cheyenne was obsessed with herself. She deserved to live with a ghost who could melt a person’s personal boundaries and send their feelings into a chaotic spin. Because Ruth was sure now, after she had walked and thought, breathing in mountain air touched by the scent of pine, that a ghost is what she had seen.
But what about Jinx? The thought rushed over Ruth in a wave that took her breath for a moment. Maybe it had been fair, and if not fair, defensible, to leave Cheyenne to the fate she had chosen by buying and romanticizing a haunted plantation. But she had left a perfectly innocent, well-intentioned, surprisingly kind person back at that haunted house with no explanation—and no warning.
Ruth stood and brushed off the seat of her skirt. She looked again at the empty camp buildings, allowing the thoughts that had tortured her many years ago to push through the surface of her long resistance: her mother had walked these dirt pathways; her mother had slept inside these cabins; her mother had been a girl here, safe and carefree.
It didn’t take Ruth long to narrow the list of places where Jinx might be staying. Here in town there was one option: Room with a View Bed-and-Breakfast, where Ruth herself had booked a room. She stopped in at the desk, inquired after Jinx, and learned from the clerk about a cabin rental near the Ball Fruit Stand.
* * *
*
“Battis. Adam Battis,” the man said to Ruth, holding out a lightly callused hand. He was a hunk with smoky dark eyes and muscled arms that, from the looks of his place, came honestly from hard work out of doors. She was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy. What did Jinx think about Adam Battis and his biceps? Wait. She knew that name, and not just because of Jinx’s research subject. She vaguely remembered this place.
“Your mother used to sell amazing cookies in front of this house,” she said. “I went to summer camp here. I’m Ruth Mayes.”
“Camp Idlewood. Sure. My mother lives in Dalton now, with her sister. I’ll pass along your compliment. Are you looking for a room? I’m full tonight, I’m afraid, but there’s a B&B a few miles up the road.”
“I’m looking for a person. Jennifer Micco? She sometimes goes by Jinx.”
“Jennifer? She’s here. Are you two together?”
“Not exactly.”
“Yes,” Jinx interrupted such that their words overlapped as she pulled the door back to stand beside Adam.
Ruth looked from Adam to Jinx, at the comfortable way Jinx held the doorknob.
“Come on in,” Adam said, watching her. “Jennifer’s renting the place for a few nights. I do the cooking sometimes and then head out to my tent. There’s dinner left, if you’re hungry.”
Ruth followed them inside the rustic cabin lined with shelves of books. She settled in at the scuffed kitchen table while Adam warmed up something that smelled delicious. He poured himself and Ruth cups of decaf coffee and set a fresh can of Coke in front of Jinx.
“What brings you back to Fort Mountain, Ruth?” Adam said.
“I’m a magazine writer, here to do research on the closure of the Hold House and the future of the historic site.”
Adam chuckled, shaking his head. “So you’re researching my lost job, and Jennifer’s researching my dead ancestors. It sure is reassuring to know that the press and professors are on the case.”
“I’m no professor,” Jinx said. “I write for myself and for my tribe, not a bunch of narrow-minded academics.”
Adam paused and took a sip of coffee. “And you two were down at the Hold House today. You met the new owner.”
“Cheyenne Cotterell,” Ruth said, her voice going flat.
“Cheyenne Cotterell,” Adam repeated. “She is something.”
He was smitten, Ruth saw immediately. Just like all the rest of them.
“A strong woman,” Adam said. “She’s got grit. She faced down Mason Allen at the courthouse auction to walk away with those keys.”
Ruth listened with annoyance as she nibbled an oven fry and cut into her pork chop. But even if he was blinded by Cheyenne’s charms, Ruth had to admit that Adam could cook. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was after that awful picnic. The tender pork chop met her tongue in a burst of savory flavor.
“Allen? Again? That guy sounds like a 3D asshole,” Jinx said.
“He comes from a powerful family and had crazy luck in the real-estate market before the bubble burst. He saw this little northwest town as the next big development opportunity. He built luxury cabins up here in the mountains for Atlanta executives, owns an RV park for motor tourists down by the highway, and has condos underway by the river. He was planning to build a housing development for rich suburbanites on the Hold estate and acted like he already owned it. I’ve heard rumors that Allen was the one who put the parks commissioner up to auctioning off the Hold land in the first place. He thought he’d be the one to buy it. He didn’t count on Ms. Cotterell.”
“What do you think Allen will do, now that he’s lost his bid?” Jinx said.
“He won’t give up, I can tell you that. Maybe he’ll wait her out and see if she’ll sell. It’s not easy to run a big, old place like that.”
“Adam used to manage operations when the house was public,” Jinx said to Ruth. “But doesn’t it piss you off,” she said, looking back at Adam, “that your family comes from that plantation, and other people can fight over it because they have the money?”
“Cheyenne claims her ancestor came from the Hold place too.” Ruth realized too late that this sounded like a defense of her.
“That’s what she told me,” Adam said.
“How likely is it, really, that a prissy African American interior designer is descended from famous Cherokees?”
“Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible,” Adam said. “More than a few Black families up here can trace connections to the Hold estate. And I wouldn’t call Cheyenne prissy. She’s just a little too proud.”
“Mm-hmm,” Ruth said, pointing the tines of her fork at him. “You just met her, and you’re already under her spell.” She saw a grin tug at the corner of Jinx’s mouth. “What?” Ruth questioned her.
“I bet you could cast a pretty mean spell yourself. But it’s possible, and I raise it as a possibility only, that you’re too busy fixating on Cheyenne to realize it.” Jinx softened her words with a teasing smile.
Ruth felt her earlobes warm beneath the spiral curls that covered them.
Adam shook his head, smiling. “I wish my friend Sally were with us. She would love this. Historical drama. Romantic mystery. Right here in our little town.”
“Sally is a mystery buff and a history buff,” Jinx said with a playful smile to match his. “She was holding out on me.”
“Fine,” Ruth interjected. “Maybe what Cheyenne says is possible. But James Hold was an enslaver. They don’t have a good reputation as a category of human being. It’s much more likely that he owned Cheyenne’s supposed ancestor than that he married her and gave her the keys to the big house.”
“And there’s a third possibility,” Jinx said. “If Cheyenne’s ancestor was enslaved on the hill, Hold could have owned her and slept with her. It happened, though some people in my tribe like to pretend it didn’t.” She looked at Adam. “Was James Hold ever known to take up with Black women, consensually—or not?”
Adam hesitated. “I’ve heard anything was possible with him. He was known to be a violent man.”
Ruth’s expression had grown stiff, her voice thinning as she spoke again. “Cheyenne told us Hold was murdered. Does anybody know who killed him, or why?”
“Historians say it was his old friend turned enemy, Alexander Sands,” Adam said. “The story goes that James went out riding one day with the Lighthorsemen, the Cherokee Nation militia, to chase down horse thieves. He came across Alexander, who insulted him. Old James Hold was not the type to tolerate disrespect. He whipped Alexander right in front of the Lighthorsemen. The next thing anybody knew, Hold was shot dead at Buffington’s Tavern.”
“Is that what you think?” Jinx asked. “That Sands did it?”
“Maybe Sands pulled the trigger. Maybe not. Plenty of people had a reason to want Hold dead.” Adam spoke with a sober expression, eyes fixed on his coffee cup.
“Like Mary Ann Battis?” Jinx said, seizing on the silence behind Adam’s words. “Would she have wanted him dead? I know she set fire to the mission station in Alabama. None of the literature says why, but it’s well documented that Native students at government boarding schools committed arson as a form of resistance. Maybe Mary Ann set the fire to defend herself or the other children. She seems like a tough, troubled girl who might do anything when pushed too far.”
“She was barely fourteen when she came to the Hold Plantation,” Adam said. “According to our family stories, she became a young mother and had a baby to care for right away. I wouldn’t be surprised if she felt she was trapped there, and being trapped makes people do desperate things.”
Ruth’s mind filled with an image then, and she let it come. She saw again the flowing skirt and dangling ribbons in the dim pearly light of the mission cabin. A troubled teenage girl stood on the line between this world and the next. River cane stalks whispered in the background. Shh.
Come. Come back. Ruth could not resist this call. She was being wrenched back in time, whether into her own lifeline, or the lifeline of the girl, she did not yet know.
FIFTEEN
Adam sat in his blue canvas tent with the flap tied open. The air outside had shifted since dinner, carrying the faint scent of a coming rain. It was a small tent designed for one or two people. He shared the space with his sleeping bag, an empty crate that doubled as a bedside table, a stack of books, and his laptop computer, which sometimes did and sometimes didn’t catch a wireless Internet signal from the Room with a View Bed-and-Breakfast up the road.
As soon as his company had abruptly left, with Ruth Mayes looking dazed and anxious, he’d tidied up the cabin and prepared it for Jennifer Micco’s return. He didn’t know what time she’d be back, given the odd circumstances of her departure, but she had rented the space. It was hers. Besides breaks for showers and meals, he stayed in his tent when he had a renter. That was the deal. What did they call it on the radio? The sharing economy? Folks in economic straits were turning to sharing more often these days to make ends meet. Adam did well with this arrangement, especially in the summer months. Since there was no mortgage on the cabin thanks to his parents, Adam’s expenses went to food, utility bills, student loans, his mint-condition 1980 Ford Bronco, and quality gardening tools. The rest he used to take his mother out to dinner once a month and to stock his savings account.
When the state closed the museum, Adam had been twenty-seven, four years out of his forestry master’s program and working at the Hold House. Once he was out of the job he loved, he’d started renting out the cabin, saving his earnings in the hope that he might be able to buy the Hold place someday—or if not buy it, at least rent land around the old mission cabin. This was where his grandmother had grown up. The family member he was named for, Adam Battis, was born in that cabin, where his great-great-great-grandmother Mary Ann had lived. His grandmother said they descended from two lines: one African American, one Cherokee. Exactly how those lines got crossed, she hadn’t known—or hadn’t seen fit to tell him. But she always said two proud bloodlines linked together were stronger than one alone.
Adam sighed and stretched his legs on the thin canvas that did nothing to cushion his muscles from the hard ground beneath. He would help Cheyenne if she’d let him, and tend the fruit trees for Sally, but the hope of living there one day, of restoring his family’s cabin, was a notion he would have to let go. Even knowing what he knew now, after a dive into the records Jennifer had pointed him to, he didn’t have the heart to try to force Cheyenne’s hand. Adam took a gulp from his water bottle and lifted his laptop back onto his thighs.
The WPA slave narratives were searchable online, digitized by the Library of Congress. Adam had found the website an hour ago and was still pondering the import of what he had discovered there. He flipped open the black lid of his laptop, reread the electronic pages he had been struggling to absorb. Five people formerly held as slaves from the Hold Plantation in Murray County, Georgia, had been interviewed in 1932. The interviewer had asked questions about their owner, food rations, physical treatment, and what they thought of Abraham Lincoln. A man named Michael Gamble was among the five interviewees. He had been born in 1850 and listed Michael and Hettie Gamble as his parents. Michael Gamble told the interviewer his family had lived in the refurbished barn of the mission station, right alongside Miss Mary Ann Battis. Miss Battis, Gamble explained to the confused interviewer, had helped raise two children on the Cherokee Rose Plantation, neither of whom was hers. One of them, Isaac Cotterell, was the child of a local Black preacher. The other, Adam Battis, was the illegitimate son of a young enslaved woman and Chief James Hold himself.
* * *
*
Come back. The picture in Ruth’s head had resurfaced the multisensory memory of the ghost sighting. And because she suspected the vision was the spirit of a girl in crisis, she had listened to the words that accompanied the image. Jinx had insisted on coming back to the Hold place with her, packing up her things at Adam’s and following Ruth in her truck.
Ruth gazed out on the shadowed oaks and the burnished brick structure. The Hold House was nearly dark. Only a small arc of light shone from the master bedroom window, casting an eerie glow. Ruth parked her Beetle, imagining Cheyenne cocooned in a cluster of pillows in the high canopy bed and wearing two-hundred-dollar pajamas and a sateen headscarf and eye mask to match.
Ruth waited for Jinx to jump down from her truck. They rounded the house beneath a full white moon. A breeze rustled the branches, sending warm ripples through the humid air. They picked their way through weeds and wildflowers to the missionary cabin situated behind the big house. Ruth used her iPhone for illumination. It shone like a firefly as she held it out before her. Jinx carried a heavy black flashlight that she had retrieved from her pickup. She swung it as she walked with that steady, loping stride, dark braid swaying like the grasses beneath their feet.
Ruth ducked into the cabin ahead of Jinx.
“What are we looking for?” Jinx said.
“Not sure. I just knew I had to come back.” Ruth moved to the spot where they had sat earlier that day. She lowered herself to the ground facing the doorway just as she had done the first time, nudging her glasses higher when they slipped down her nose.
Jinx squatted beside her. “What is it?” she said gently. “What happened here, Ruth? What did you see?”
Ruth turned to face her. “I saw a girl, like a shimmer in the sunlight, and I heard a sound, a sort of voice, telling me to come back.”
