The Cherokee Rose, page 19
That night, with my husband sleeping beside me, I dreamt of poison hemlock.
“I want to murder the asshole myself.” Cheyenne shot up from her Chippendale chair and rubbed her upper arms abrasively through the fabric of her robe. Her face was a crumpled flower, all illusions shattered. “It’s so damn cold in here,” she said, squeezing her arms with a punishing force.
“What he did to Patience…” Tears were wet on Ruth’s cheeks.
Jinx laid the diary page upside down on top of the one before it. Her eyes fell on Ruth. “Cheyenne, tissues?”
“Oh, of course.” Cheyenne had started pacing in front of James Hold’s portrait, the rhinestones on her slippers flashing in the chandelier’s muted light. She stopped abruptly and walked through the swinging doors into the kitchenette and butler’s pantry. Then came the echo of cupboard doors opening and closing as Cheyenne looked for supplies.
The next sound they heard was a scream. “Cheyenne!” Ruth said, jumping up.
Jinx and Ruth found Cheyenne standing on a step stool beside the open pantry, hand clasped over her mouth. The door was thrown back beside her. Cheyenne stood frozen, gazing at an upper shelf just out of reach. Ruth peered into the storage space. It looked like a stuffed animal at first, soft and orange, glassy eyes the color of grass blades. But the cat was real. Real and dead, its neck twisted unnaturally to one side. There was no smell. Death had been recent—while Cheyenne was resting in bed, or when they had found the ground safe.
“It’s Sorbet,” Cheyenne said, shoulders trembling beneath the ivory robe. “He did this to her.”
“What!” Ruth said, alarmed. She hadn’t even known Cheyenne had a pet. “Who?”
“You should come down from there,” Jinx said, holding a hand up to Cheyenne who stepped unsteadily to the floor, her face drained of emotion. “When I bought this house, I beat out another major contender. His name is Mason Allen.”
“We’ve heard of him,” Jinx said. “And I’ve seen him in action. He ran into me, literally, at the Marathon station. Scary guy.”
“He wanted this place as much as I did. I could see it in his eyes. After the auction, he suggested I go back to Atlanta. Obviously, I didn’t. And then strange things started happening around here.”
“What kinds of things?” Ruth had dried her face with the backs of her hands and was focusing on Cheyenne.
“Little things that seemed like they could be accidents or bad luck at first. Someone cut the blossoms off my azaleas. I found a bunch of filthy cockroaches in the fireplace. And now the cat is dead. She was a stray, a smart, pretty thing, but I took to her.” Cheyenne caught and held Ruth’s gaze.
Ruth dipped her head, breaking the contact.
“And you think Mason Allen is doing this?” Jinx asked.
“Maybe the blossoms blew off. Maybe the roaches were in the walls. Maybe Sorbet was already sick and climbed up there to die. But I don’t think so. That man was…He was…determined. I should have paid closer attention.”
“You had no idea he would act on his twisted belief that he owns this whole town,” Jinx said. “Adam said he’s been digging up the African American cemetery.”
Ruth gasped.
“He’s trying to intimidate me. I know it now. But to kill a helpless animal?” Cheyenne stared into the cupboard at the carcass.
Jinx reached around her to shut the door. “We’ll have Sorbet removed tomorrow.”
“You should sit down,” Ruth said. She rummaged in the kitchenette drawers, then made tea in the microwave. She returned to the dining room with a tray of full Styrofoam cups.
“Next time, use the good china.” Cheyenne reached for a cup, breathed into the steam, and then added in a quieter voice, “Thank you, Ruth.”
Ruth wrapped the cashmere throw from a side chair around Cheyenne’s shoulders before taking a seat at the table. “You’re welcome.”
Cheyenne grasped the fringe edges of the covering, pulling them tightly across her breasts. “I owe you an apology, for what I said about your mother. It was wrong and insensitive of me.”
Taken aback by this turn, Ruth squinted at Cheyenne, all the while feeling Jinx’s eyes on her. The room fell silent as Ruth hesitated beneath the glare of James Hold’s portrait.
“Apology accepted. And Cheyenne, about the bulimia, I should never have—”
Cheyenne looked away from Ruth this time, toward the china cabinet. “Honestly, we’re all works in progress. I have some things to improve on too.”
Ruth waited a moment for Cheyenne’s gaze to return before giving her a sad smile. “Should we call the police? About the cat?”
“What would I report without looking like a hysterical urbanite?”
“Vandalism? Harassment? Breaking and entering? There must be some legal term for this crap,” Ruth said.
“Not until I can prove it was him.” Cheyenne straightened her back in the chair. “People around here respect him for some imperceptible reason.”
“It’s his family’s money, and maybe political influence too.” Jinx warmed her hands around a Styrofoam cup as she watched the other two women. “Sally Perdue and Adam both say the Allens have dominated this area for generations.”
Cheyenne turned up her nose at the sound of Sally Perdue’s name. “I can’t put my reputation at risk in this town by accusing their golden boy of infantile pranks. I’d be the one to suffer for it, not him. I have a business to launch, and it will be successful.”
“We’re all tired,” Jinx said. “It’s the end of a very long day. We can make sure the house is locked tight and revisit the police question tomorrow when our minds are clear. But we’re not leaving you alone here tonight. Right, Ruth?”
“Fine with me,” Cheyenne said, relief in her voice beneath the bluster. “You two can sleep in the guest room.”
“And you’re sleeping in there with us,” Ruth said, “whether you want to or not. We should stay together.”
“Do you have any bags?”
“In our cars.”
“I’m not walking you ladies out to the driveway, of course. But I will stand by the door with the porch light on while you go.”
Ruth stood and directed a stare at the formal oil painting hanging over the sideboard. “Watch your back, James Hold,” she said aloud to his brooding visage. “We’re moving in.”
* * *
*
In the small first-floor bathroom, Jinx unwound her braid, brushed her teeth, and changed into a heather tank top and boxer shorts. Ruth emerged from the bathroom next, smelling like cherries from a fresh application of body lotion, and wearing a nightshirt that read Hold on While I Overthink This. The nightshirt clung to Ruth’s curves and revealed the strong muscles of her full thighs. The headband was gone. Tight curls tumbled over her forehead, threatening to overtake her eyes. Jinx glanced away, until she sensed Ruth looking back, and then she smiled.
Cheyenne left all the lights on downstairs and mounted the grand staircase. The two guests followed her. The old home settled in sighs while each of them found a spot in the guest room. Cheyenne took the queen-sized bed, propping the embroidered pillows behind her. Ruth sat on the end of the mahogany sleigh bed—carved, by the look of it, from a single piece of wood. Jinx joined Ruth, at the other end, draping a lace coverlet over both of their knees that tented in the middle like two mountain ranges meeting at a narrow pass.
“It looks like this old house is still full of surprises,” Cheyenne remarked obliquely as she glanced their way.
The deep darkness of midnight had gathered outside the windows. Jinx adjusted a pillow behind her back and smoothed the loose strands of hair that shadowed her now-straining eyes. She sipped the tepid tea from her cup and tugged the chain of the tulip-shaped lamp. She could hear the breathing of the other two women as they waited for her to begin. She reached for the chestnut box.
EIGHTEEN
May 7, 1815
All is calm about the place since Mr. Hold has been away at the government trading post in Tellico, Tennessee. In his absence, the house Negroes do what they please, and Mrs. Hold declines to exert authority over them. The field slaves too take their liberties, refusing to work at night, and the overseer, a vile, lazy man, slips in his vigilance. Mr. Gamble complains that our mission slave Faith has been infected by this wanton attitude of the Hold slaves, and as a result has slowed down the housework that she can accomplish even on crippled feet.
But to my understanding, she has been occupied with far more worthy endeavors. Our thriving garden now includes 32 medicinal plants, of which Faith is the chief alchemist. Faith receives many visits from the Negroes as well as the Indians, who seek her healing salves. She confirms that among the Negroes, Isaac is suspected of taking his leave, and among the common Cherokees, whose language Isaac speaks, having been born in this country and raised among the Indians, he is much missed. Tongues wag about where Isaac has gone, how long he will stay there, and by what means he made his escape. I dare not speak a word to another soul on this subject. I pray fervently on my knees each day that the Lord may forgive my poor judgment in sending Isaac on so foolish a journey. I pray too that my husband does not discover my indiscretion. For even in our Church, where women’s talents are valued, men stand at the helm. As Head Missionary to the Cherokees, my husband could send me away from this place and these people, around whose hearts I have begun to twine my own.
May 14, 1815
Mr. Hold is still away on his trading venture. And so the loveliest month of the year has brought with it a welcome warmth and seven new scholars for our fledgling boarding school. Three of the children, Joseph, Mary, and Jesse, are Mr. Hold’s own, sent to us by their various mothers. Three come from prominent Cherokee families of Coosawattee and Coosa towns, whose parents entrust to us their instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and moral reasoning. One is an older girl called Mary Ann Battis, sent to us from a Methodist mission school in Creek country. Mulatto in color with pensive dark eyes and bean-like limbs, she is said to be the unfortunate child of a poor Creek woman and a Negro. Her father having run away, and her mother unable to feed all her children begotten by him, Mary Ann was sent to the Creek mission by the Indian Agent from the U. States, to be housed and educated there. By native right, she was born free and eligible for full support at the school, where she distinguished herself among the Indian pupils. Quick of mind, she is also quick of hand, for Agent Meigs related that the girl is suspected of having set fire to the place and was therefore expelled. Even now, she has been sent to us while her old mission schoolhouse lies in ashes on the ground of the Alabama-Georgia border. The Creek Agent has begun an investigation, and the head Missionary, accused of improper management and other improprieties beside, has been sent back to his home in South Carolina.
I wonder at the wisdom of this troubled girl of questionable parentage having been sent here to us, and can only surmise that my husband’s reputation for sound judgment and a firm hand has traveled as far as the Creek territory to the west. The girl reads and writes well, and keeps to herself in the main, often burying her face in the pages of her spelling book. She refuses to let Mr. Gamble meet her eyes. When he gestures to her in simple greeting, she jerks her hand away as if his touch might sear her flesh. She seems not to have faith in the majority of humanity, suspecting every action of secret motivations. Even my own gentle direction she tolerates with suspicious looks. She seems to have taken only to the Negro preacher, Sam Cotterell, who remains in the vicinity. Perhaps Mr. Cotterell reminds the girl of her own lost father.
Isaac has not yet returned. He has been absent nearly three weeks, and even the lazy overseer has begun to ask questions.
May 18, 1815
I am in receipt of a letter from Rev. Muhlenberg in Philadelphia. He has received the plant samples and predicts this Cherokee collection that I am amassing to be the only one of its kind. Meanwhile, the Negro Isaac who delivered the samples has not come back. I grow anxious by the day that Mr. Hold will miss him upon his return.
May 22, 1815
One day this month, I awoke and departed my bedroom to find a strange thing had occurred. The Negroes who are often about pleading for food or Faith’s medicine had come this day bearing plants of all description. They crowded into our mission hearth room, having with them cuttings and seedpods gathered from the far corners of Mr. Hold’s acreage. I hesitated at this curious outpouring and reached for my white cap, which, having just awakened, I had not yet placed on my head. Across the cabin, Faith sat on her low wood bench, wearing an indigo head wrap and kneading dough. She watched me while appearing not to. Our new and promising student of the Creek nation, Mary Ann, also watched from the side of the room, where she sat with a book in Faith’s sleeping enclosure. Her pensive eyes fixed on my face, awaiting my response with greater anxiety, perhaps, than the crowd of suffering humanity before me. Little Michael had pulled the Sunday meeting chairs into a haphazard row for the older members of the visiting party. I paused by Faith’s side and bent to her ear, smelling the St. John’s wort and sage that she had been crushing the evening last. “Faith, what is this? Do you know?” I whispered.
“No, ma’am, I surely don’t,” she answered, then paused. “Unless it has to do with Isaac.”
“Isaac?” I repeated, my heart hurtling.
The itinerant Negro preacher, Mr. Sam Cotterell, then made himself visible at the end of the line, his white hair a thundercloud atop his head and his Bible in its leather pouch at his side.
“I understand that you are a student of plants,” he said, his voice a rumble, his eyes steadily searching mine, “that you collect ’em and send ’em beyond the Cherokee lands to your associates in the North. Gander, Caty, Bob, Peter, Sam, Big Jenny, and Hannah, here, have gone to great lengths to bring these cuttings to you. May be that you see fit to send one among ’em on an errand someday.”
I was beyond shock at his boldness. My knees buckled beneath my petticoat. I had not time to ascertain how he surmised my role in Isaac’s journey. I looked at the assemblage gathered before me, at the plant stems tucked into baskets, wrapped in squares of woven cloth, gathered with twine, dried between bark, and grasped in worn, callused hands. “Mr. Cotterell,” I said firmly, my eyes fixed on his Bible pouch, “I fear to what misunderstandings I owe these gifts.”
“You might see that you find a use for ’em, sometime or other.” He nodded to the gathered Negroes, who heaped their supply of dazzling plant life upon the center table as if it were a beloved’s grave. Mr. Cotterell departed from the cabin. The line of slaves trickled out behind him.
Faith has indeed made good use of these cuttings, isolating some of the seeds to enhance our medicinal garden and learning of their applications from an old Cherokee man named Earbob, who comes from time to time to talk with her. These include the use of Acer rubrum—the inner bark boiled to a syrup, made into pills, and these dissolved in water for cases of unseeing eyes, the eyes washed therewith, and of Podophyllum peltatum—a drop of the juice of the fresh root in the ear, is a cure for deafness. Earbob is held up by the Cherokees as a healer, though his methods are far from verifiable. Besides his use of herbs, which is at least within reason, he places red and white corals afloat in vessels of water for divination purposes. If the corals rise in the water, this is taken as a sign that the patient will recover from his, or her, malady.
May 27, 1815
Mr. Cotterell has seen fit to continue his sojourn here to urge the bondsmen of Mr. Hold to the light of salvation. Mr. Gamble is not present enough to worry over the competition this might cause to our home church. I am quite open to any method of saving souls for Christ, and I see in Mr. Cotterell a gift of experience. It is said that Mr. Cotterell was once a slave of the Indians himself before purchasing his freedom, converting to Methodism, and taking to the road. He has collected on his journeys a working knowledge of many languages, not only the Cherokee and English spoken here, and an unnamed African tongue, but also the Creek tongue. He visits our mission often to soothe the children who cry in the night, longing for their mothers’ cooking fires. Mary Ann especially takes his words to heart, as he can converse with her in her native language. In the heat of the afternoon beneath the peach trees that line the boundary of our mission, he takes off his hat, abandons his walking stick, and lowers himself to the ground, regaling the children with stories of wily rabbits and dancing billy goats. He has asked me to teach him the German word for this or that and at times punctuates his stories with the gems of his new vocabulary. On these occasions, we are quite alone—the children, Mr. Cotterell, and I, except for a visit from Mr. Hold’s slaves, who drift over from their work yard to hear about the goings on of Brer Rabbit the story character, and the younger Mrs. Hold, who seems drawn to the sound of children’s laughter floating freely across the garden.
June 1, 1815
The meadows are alive with green grass and clover. Summer has come. I have taken chief charge of our little school, guiding the pupils in reading and script. All whom we accept are the children of heathen Indians. We make no distinction here between Indians and half castes, as the Cherokees themselves do not. For several hours in the morning and afternoon, the students are in classes. Otherwise, they are kept busy in the field, garden, or yard.
Mary Ann is so talented as to serve as my teaching assistant. She works in the main with the youngest scholars. Her eagerness to absorb new knowledge has gotten the better of her resentment at having been sent here among us, when she had hoped that by setting a fire she would be rid of the teachers and returned to her mother. On Saturdays while the Indian pupils run about the woods in the company of the Negro children, a habit which they cannot be broken of, I devote my time to instructing Mary Ann in my own beloved subjects of botany and the poetic arts. Even the work of Linnaeus and Bartram is not beyond her grasp. Mary Ann in turn has taken to tutoring Mrs. Hold, who is determined to learn how to read and write the English language, so that she might decipher the Holy Book for herself.
