The Cherokee Rose, page 8
“And who will start the bidding at one hundred thousand dollars? One hundred thousand for the house on the hillside and fifteen lush acres of prime Georgia farmland,” the auctioneer intoned.
A man in a cowboy hat representing the Cherokee contingent bid first, lifting his hand with a pointed index finger. A low murmur of approval sounded from the back of the courthouse. This group was determined to keep the home out of private hands with the funds it had raised in its community campaign, which probably included many of the onlookers in the room that day.
Mason Allen casually threw his hand up, raising the bid to two hundred thousand.
Cheyenne bided her time, waiting to see what would happen next.
The man in the cowboy hat looked encouraged, and answered the auctioneer’s prompt for an increase of fifty thousand dollars.
“Three hundred and one thousand, Jasper,” Mason Allen said with quiet finality. His expression was one of satisfaction, as if he relished the moment.
The Cherokee contingent fell back against their benches, defeated. Everyone who followed the local news knew they had raised three hundred thousand dollars—an impressive figure, but not enough.
The courthouse went silent.
Cheyenne saw Mason Allen wink at Lanie Brevard.
“I have three hundred and one thousand dollars, three hundred and one thousand dollars. Who will make it four for this one-of-a-kind plantation property?”
“Four hundred thousand.” Cheyenne’s voice was high-pitched and shaky, like the ring of a wineglass touched to a tabletop by jittery fingertips.
Turning in his seat to look behind him, Mason Allen fixed his steely eyes on her face. He raised a hand at the auctioneer and coolly pledged half a million dollars.
Cheyenne knew the outcome was now uncertain. Her parents had set her limit at five hundred thousand, and even that was too much in their view. Just like Cheyenne, they had seen the Hold property photos online—visual evidence of the lapse in care, overgrown shrubbery, and provincial town services. But to Cheyenne, those photos didn’t do the house justice. You had to be there to sense its true value. You had to feel the spirit of the house.
Cheyenne tapped the buttons of her Blackberry as she worded a hasty text message to her father and waited for his answer. “Going bid is 500k. Great investment. Go to 600, Daddy?”
Her cell phone beeped, and she lifted her hand with a cautious smile. Her father had replied within seconds. She was still in the game.
Mason Allen’s face reddened. He raised his hand like an ax splitting wood. He never took his eyes from hers as he bid seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred thousand, more. Cheyenne saw her opponent’s emotions rising with each sharp cut of his palm in the air. He could be running out of rope. They could be close to the end.
Cheyenne’s fingers flew across her phone. She didn’t want to give her father time to call or text her sensible mother, who would have nipped this venture in the bud hundreds of thousands of dollars ago. But she had always been her father’s little princess.
She seized on the thought. “Daddy,” she typed out, “it can be all mine for 1 mil. I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Seconds that felt like minutes passed. Her cell phone beeped. Cheyenne was stunned as she uttered aloud the figure that could have bought a spectacular townhouse in Savannah’s famed historic district, now that the real-estate market was showing signs of an impending crash.
Mason Allen sat back, breathing like a steam engine, his face bright red. Cheyenne heard a collective gasp. She had won her dream house, to have and to hold. And the big man on campus had been bested, maybe for the first time in his life. Her stomach tightened with the promise and the anxiety of it.
Mason Allen turned to his astonished associates with a look that could not contain his rage. He stood and strode down the courtroom aisle with a confidence born of privilege. The other men followed. The state employees craned their necks. Lanie Brevard wilted with patent disappointment.
When Mason passed the bench where Cheyenne sat, flushed by her public triumph, he paused to hold out a hand to her. “Congratulations, Miss Cotterell. The Hold House is quite a prize—and quite a challenge to secure in these elements. You’ve got your vermin, your floods, your wildfires, your vagrants, and the occasional violent criminal hiding out from the law in the woods. How many doors and windows are there on that big place? Have you counted yet? If I was the one wearing your pretty high heels right now, I’d run to Atlanta and not look back.”
Cheyenne pressed into her seat, instinctively ducking her head like prey. Then she recognized the message she was sending. She regained her composure and raised her dark eyes to meet his. This man needed to understand that she would not be so easily cowed, that she was the kind of woman who got what she wanted. Hadn’t he just seen proof of that?
“Mr. Allen, is it? Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
“In that case, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He laughed at his own words, making show of his good sportsmanship without letting the vocal levity alter the steel of his eyes.
“Please, this way.” The auctioneer was speaking to Cheyenne. She stood and saw over the auctioneer’s shoulder that a cluster of people, the African American contingent in the back, had stayed to watch her interaction with Allen. One of them, the far-too-attractive park ranger, held his hat in a tight-knuckled grip and scowled.
Cheyenne followed the auctioneer, who motioned her toward a private meeting room where she handled the paperwork with Lanie Brevard and a horde of shocked attorneys and state representatives. She signed the last page and stood, smoothing the red-wine silk of her knee-length skirt. She held her shoulders upright and headed toward the courtroom doors with a sashaying walk. She didn’t glance at Mason Allen, who still stood beside her empty bench, hands clenched in his pockets.
“Well, now.” Cheyenne heard a voice like rustling autumn leaves as she passed through the courthouse doors and onto the broad stone steps. It was the elderly woman with silver hair and maple-syrup-colored skin. Her light blue dress was like a costume out of time, a 1950s-style maid’s uniform. And if she was still standing here, she had made it a point to wait for Cheyenne.
“Just look at you, sugar.”
“Excuse me?” Cheyenne said.
“Just look at you. I’m Delta Jones. Lived here all my life. And I ain’t never seen nothing like that before. The Allens bumped down a notch. Where are you from? Who are your people?”
Cheyenne saw pride shining in the woman’s eyes, pride directed toward her. She offered her hand and introduced herself.
“Owning the Hold House is more than a notion,” Delta Jones said. “Funny thing about that place. No one can seem to hold on to it, no matter how bad they want to. The children of James Hold lost the land to the Georgia state lottery before that Trail of Tears. The Georgia militia men who drew the lots set fire to the house to smoke the family out, and then fought to the death with each other because they thought there was gold on the grounds.”
“I’m not intending to go anywhere, Mrs. Jones,” Cheyenne said, clutching her handbag and glancing back toward the courthouse door. “Nor am I planning to die.”
She took note of the park ranger with the serious eyes standing behind Mrs. Jones, listening to their exchange. But she didn’t want to make eye contact, for fear of what she would see in his face. Surely not the kind of pride that the elderly Mrs. Jones exuded, a racial pride she remembered from her grandmother’s generation of Black Southern women. No. The ranger’s job had been on the line, and his side, the state employees, had not even had one chip to play.
The park ranger had lost to her, just like Mason Allen. Would she see anger in his expression? Resentment? Outrage? Cheyenne chanced a glance. Up this close, the ranger’s eyes were magnetic, so dark and intense that they rivaled a stormy nighttime sky. He shook his head—in disbelief, or maybe frustration—when their eyes finally met.
“Come on, Miss Delta,” he said in a Southern accent thicker and deeper than what Cheyenne was used to in Atlanta. “Let me drive you back to work.”
Fine. That was fine with her. She didn’t need to know his name. She would probably never see him again. Maids and park employees were not exactly in her social set. The Hold House auction had brought out all sorts of people, and now they would scatter again to the places where they belonged.
“Watch yourself, sugar,” Mrs. Jones called as the ranger gently led her away, touching an elbow to guide her toward the courtroom doors. “Things ain’t always what they seem. Shallow waters run out. Still waters run deep.”
NINE
Jinx slept in at the Super 8, called her cousin and her mother to tell them she was still alive, and found an IHOP for lunch because she would eat pancakes anytime.
By late afternoon, she crossed the state line and found the town of Chatsworth, Georgia, sister city to the historic township of Hold Hill, where the Hold Plantation and Moravian mission were located. She followed Highway 411 through the center of town, passing an old inn, boarded up and abandoned, with a massive sign of a caricatured Indian advertising the Chief Hold Hotel. She drove past a brick law office, a flat-roofed diner, and a dive called Chief Hold Video and Tanning that shared a lot with a Marathon gas station. Indian kitsch was always weirdest in places where Native Americans used to live in large numbers. Jinx rolled her eyes, pulling into the gas station. She had read online that there were a few motels in town, mostly along the main road into the mountains. She would grab a fresh Coke and ask for directions.
“You’re not looking for the Hold House, are you?” the young woman behind the register said. She held out her hand to take Jinx’s money for Twizzlers, Coke, and beef jerky. “It’s closed. No more tours. We used to get a lot of Indians coming through to visit the place back when I worked there. Cherokees and Poarch Creeks, mainly. Are you from North Carolina? Alabama?” The woman was in her early twenties. She had a bright Southern drawl and rambunctiously curly strawberry hair pinned back at her temples with flat barrettes. Her sunny smile contrasted with the circles beneath her eyes.
“Oklahoma,” Jinx said. “What happened to the tours?”
“The museum closed a few years ago. Folks around here hoped it might reopen, but the state auctioned off the place just this morning. It’s a sad case, to tell you the truth.”
Sold. Jinx’s hopes fell even as her attention pricked at this unexpected opinion. “Why do you think so?”
“It wasn’t just General Scott who ran the Cherokees out of this valley. The local militia was in on it up to their ears. The way I see it, the state of Georgia is guilty for the part we played. The least we could do is keep the Hold House open as a show of respect for the fact that the Indians were here before any of us white folks. But I’m going on too much. I always do that, Eddie says.” The young woman handed Jinx her change and clamped her lips shut.
“Eddie sounds like an idiot,” Jinx said, smiling at her.
The woman blinked in surprise, then grinned. “Don’t tell his mama that. She’ll quit babysitting for me Tuesdays and Thursdays. Want to drink that now?” She handed Jinx an old-fashioned bottle opener and leaned forward on the counter.
Jinx popped the top on her frosted Coca-Cola, cradling the thick green glass. “Heaven,” she said, taking a swig. “I’m Jennifer Micco. And I could listen to people talk about history all day.”
“Sally Perdue, no kin to the governor. And I guess you could say I’m a history buff too.”
Jinx leaned forward. “So, who bought the house? At the auction?”
Sally Perdue glanced around the store. Except for a couple in biking shorts quibbling over the various brands of bottled water and a lone teenager lurking around the explicit magazines, it was empty. “Mason Allen tried to buy it. He’s a real-estate man and builder whose family goes back a long way here. He spent a month placing ads in the paper about his big plan to build a housing development on the old Hold property. The Cherokee Chieftains Club, he was calling it, ‘where the streets are lined with gold.’ ”
“Sounds a little over the top.” Jinx sipped her Coke.
“Not around here. We had our very own gold rush in 1829. Allen liked the idea of it, I guess—the symbol of the gold. The development was supposed to be real fancy, with a clubhouse in the original building, half-a-million-dollar homes scattered around it, and a golf course in the old cornfields and wheat fields. I bet he’s steamed he couldn’t get his hands on that land. Somebody else bought it right out from under him. A woman from Atlanta.” Sally whispered, “A Black woman.”
Jinx’s eyebrows shot up. Her chances of getting into the place might have just improved. “Is she there now?”
“She came to town for the holiday weekend. Drives a Mercedes.” Sally winked. “Looks like she’s got what it takes to give Mason Allen a run for his money.”
Jinx was quiet, recalibrating.
“You know,” Sally continued, “maybe she’d let you see the place. Wouldn’t hurt to ask. It’s just up the road, past the four-way stoplight. You’ll go up a hill and turn right at the iron gates.”
“Thanks,” Jinx said. “Could you recommend a place to stay around here? For cheap?”
“How long are you fixin’ to be in town?”
“Just a few days.”
“There’s a bed-and-breakfast way up the mountain road, before you reach the entrance to Fort Mountain Park. That’ll run you at least a hundred a night. But if you want cheap, I have a neighbor who rents a room in his cabin. He clears out and stays in his tent. Charges thirty bucks a day, and that includes a fair share of whatever he’s got in the fridge.”
“Is he a good guy?” Jinx said, her tone pointed.
“The best. Used to work at the Hold House before they shut it down. Now he gets by how he can, like most of us.”
“How would I find this place?”
“It’s halfway up the mountain road. A log cabin with a green door and a vegetable garden out front, just past the Ball Fruit Stand that looks like it’s falling apart.”
“A fruit stand?”
“The Ball Fruit Stand. Even though the sign fell off its hooks, you can still make out the words. My grandparents used to own it, but they lost the land due to taxes. Here, try this.”
Sally reached below the register and then handed Jinx a canning jar wrapped in a red-checked square of cloth. “Strawberry preserves. I learned how to make homemade jams from my grandma. They used to sell the freshest fruit at that stand, sweet and juicy like you wouldn’t believe, a lot of it grown right over in the Hold House orchards. There’s still plenty of good fruit there, even though the state let the grounds go to pot. My jams are the hottest items in this store. My boss pretends like he doesn’t know I’m selling them in exchange for jars for his wife.”
“How much do you charge?” Jinx said, eyeing the jar that was already making her mind wander to pancakes smothered in jam.
“It’s a gift. Stop back in before you leave town and say hello.” Sally reached for Jinx’s empty Coke bottle. “I’ll take that for you.”
“Thanks. And I’ll be sure to.” Jinx grabbed her plastic bag of snacks, along with the container of jam. She saw the teen loafing his way to the counter with a computer gaming magazine and stepped out of his path as she headed for the exit.
“If you stay at Adam Battis’s cabin, tell him I sent you,” Sally called. “I live just up the road from him, in a white trailer.”
Jinx stopped in her tracks. Adam Battis? Then, through the convenience-store window cluttered with decals and obscured by two-liter Sprite bottles, she saw the lot suddenly fill. Three men pulled up in a roar of sound: engines, brakes, and revved-up voices. Rifles hung at the rear of their vehicles. A dead doe, her neck nearly severed, flopped in one of the truck beds. The men jumped from their cabs, cloaked in Day-Glo hunting vests. They yanked the gasoline hoses free and filled their tanks.
The teenager squeezed past Jinx, who had frozen in place, holding the door ajar.
“Speak of the devil,” Sally Perdue said. “Mason Allen hunting with firearms before the season’s open. He must be madder than hell today.” Taking her cue from Sally, who had gone rigid as a scarecrow, Jinx fixed her eyes on the man striding toward the building. He pushed past her as if she were invisible. The smell of sweat mixed with cologne wafted from his skin in the tight space of the doorway. Jinx backed into a rack of free advertising circulars, watching the other two men follow in his footsteps.
“Why didn’t you get him, Mase?” one of the men called out while he grabbed a six-pack from the cooler. The couple in biking shorts made their way to the checkout with bottles of Evian and pouches of granola.
“I told you I didn’t have the angle,” the first man responded in a low voice.
“Lay off,” the third man said. “Mason’s had a tough day. Probably doesn’t feel right hunting in the Hold House woods now that somebody else holds the deed.”
Mason Allen’s face went red as he turned to his fellow. “If I didn’t feel right hunting in those woods, I wouldn’t have suggested it. I still own all the property around that estate, which is more than any other man in this town can say. I’ll hunt anyplace I damn well please. Nothing’s changed.”
“Sure,” the third man said. “We know that. Why don’t you come over to the house tonight? I’ll have Jules clean up the deer. We’ll have venison, some good draft pints, and Betty’s fresh chess pie. We can shoot some pool and relax.”
Jinx watched Mason Allen’s temper drain. He had accepted the peace offering.
