The Cherokee Rose, page 9
“She won’t last in that big old place,” the second man said. “Wild animals in the woods. Pests and barn cats in the house.”
“Damn straight,” said Mason Allen. “She won’t last a week.”
With a last glance toward Sally, who was ringing up the couple’s things, Jinx hustled to her truck. Turning out of the parking lot, she headed in the direction of a tree-covered mountain jutting into the sky.
* * *
*
Jinx followed the two-lane road through town, past chicken coops and an old sawmill. As the road climbed, the buildings and yards spread farther apart beside it. A forest sprang up to her left, throwing shade. Jinx spotted a dilapidated ruin of white wood and lattice, where a faded, peeling sign on the ground pictured a blush-orange peach on the stem: Ball Fruit Stand. She peered into breaks in the trees beyond the stand and spotted a small log cabin with dark green shutters and a porch set with two red rocking chairs. She turned down the dirt road, passing raised garden beds crowded with cornstalks, sunflowers, and tomatoes. She passed a small woodshed and parked by an old pump well.
“Hello?” Jinx called into the yard. No one answered. She climbed the porch steps and knocked on the closed screen door. Nothing. A handwritten Guests Check Here sign was taped to a tin mailbox on the porch floor. Jinx opened the lid. An envelope was inside. “Instructions for Guests,” it read. The note invited visitors to use the enclosed key to let themselves in, to put a sign on the front door, and to leave thirty dollars in the box; it also provided a number to call if they needed anything. Trusting guy, Jinx thought. Or crazy guy. She riffled through the supply of mini flashlights and one-size-fits-all rain ponchos in the mailbox and saw a stack of creased motel-style Do Not Disturb signs. She was too curious to turn around and leave, too strapped to pay B&B prices. Besides, Adam Battis had to come home sometime, and Jinx wanted to find out exactly who he was. She pulled the key out of the envelope and unlocked the cabin door.
The building was designed with an open layout of around six hundred square feet. A loft bed with a futon underneath was built into the wall to the left of the entry door. A sign taped to the futon frame read For Guests. A stone fireplace was the focal point, encircled by a plaid sofa and a ladder-back wooden chair. Outdated gas appliances and a scratched round table and chairs made up a kitchen area in the rear corner. The space was neat and clean and smelled like pine trees. There was little clutter to offer clues about the man who lived here—no photographs on the dresser, no pictures on the wall, no dirty dishes in the sink. A bag of dry cat food hunched on the kitchen counter, but she saw no sign of a cat.
Instead of trinkets or photos or pets, this man collected books. Built-in bookshelves sandwiched the fireplace and wrapped around the living room walls. The titles were labeled by category, then by genre—Fiction: Literary, Mystery, Speculative; Nonfiction: Religion, Science, Mythology. The shelf by the futon was labeled Local Interest and held books on Cherokee history, Georgia history, plantation architecture, Southern gardening, and the Appalachian Trail. Brochures and maps had a home on the shelf, along with a laminated field guide to birds and a bin of vintage postcards marked at a dollar each. Between Mother Goose at the bookstore, Sally at the gas station, and the mysterious Adam Battis, Southern hospitality had reached heights of knowledge and eccentricity Jinx had never imagined.
She went out to get her duffel and messenger bags, then hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the front door. She rummaged in the fridge and cupboards and made herself buttered toast with gobs of Sally’s homemade jam, uttering an involuntary “Hmm” as she bit into a piece. Jinx washed her dishes and made up the futon with the striped bedsheets folded at the foot. She heaved the heavy church history out of her duffel bag and situated two bed pillows along the back of the futon. Sitting up against them, she pushed her legs in front of her and listened for the sound of a car approaching. She would read while she waited for Adam Battis to appear.
Jinx opened the book to the title page: A History of the United Brethren in America, Inclusive of Abstracts of the Hold Hill Mission of the Cherokee Nation, 1815–1825, kept by our brethren and sisters who journeyed into the darkness of the heathen Indian lands. She skimmed the chronicle of church events in eastern and central Europe, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, making her way toward the section on the Cherokee mission on the Hold Plantation:
What follows is an accounting of the Hold Hill Mission to the Cherokees. The chronicle is based on the diary of Missionary Anna Rosina Kliest Gamble, as summarized by her favorite pupil and Indian sister in Christ, Mary Ann Battis, who gave the story in a letter to the clerk of the Church before her death in 1886. The diary of Mrs. Gamble, known only to her pupil, is lost now to history. It was, the Indian sister related, full of anecdotes, sometimes even of thrilling interest, particularly those in reference to the celebrated James Hold & his contemporaries. After her mother’s early death, Mrs. Gamble was raised to great success in the Bethlehem orphanage and boarding school. She taught sixteen years in the Female Academy at Bethlehem. Later in life, she was a very efficient help in the Missionary labors of Br. John Gamble and became the Hold Hill Mission’s chief diarist. It is to be regretted that Mrs. Gamble had no biographer, & even astonishing that she was not her own, as she was passionately fond of her pen & wrote about almost everything, excepting herself. Her command of English, both written and spoken, was exceptional. Her gifted mind possessed a poetic fancy. She left many pages of manuscript, which we fear have been lost. Gathered here is all that remains, as recalled by her devoted pupil.
An immediate picture of Mrs. Gamble affixed itself to Jinx’s mind—based, she guessed, on her brief encounter with Moravian history in graduate school, as well as a hazy image of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s mother from the Little House on the Prairie television show. She envisioned a kindly middle-aged woman with graying light brown hair swept up into a modest bun. On top of Mrs. Gamble’s head rested a thin covering trimmed with handworked lace. Satisfied with her conjured image, Jinx continued to read:
After the restoration of peace following the Cherokee War with the English in 1760, it was decided by the Church to establish a Mission among the Cherokees, but the Indians were not then receptive. In the wake of the American War of Independence, which changed the balance of power in the region, our ambassadors received a friendly reception from James Hold, a chief of the upper Cherokee towns, who said if the Brethren should open a grammar school for their children, we might come and make a trial of teaching the Gospel also. The upper chiefs came to our ambassadors, bid them welcome, & shook them by the right hand as a sign of friendship. James Hold appropriated land for the use of the Mission & directed his Negroes to assist our Brethren in enlarging an existing cabin. According to the instructions agreed upon in the meeting, we were not to concentrate on the Indians alone but to give some attention to the half Indians and the Negroes also, many of whom were slaves.
At last the Revd. John Gamble, an experienced and faithful Minister of the Brethren’s Church, who had already been on a visit to Hold Hill and was well known to Mr. James Hold, felt himself called upon to accept an appointment as principal Missionary from our Church to the Cherokees. His respected wife, who had entered into the married state but a few months before, after having served for many years as principal Tutoress in the School for young ladies at Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, accompanied him. Mrs. Gamble had, two years prior, accompanied the Revd. Loskiel in a visit to our Indian Congregation in Ohio. Her mind opened to the plight of the Aborigines of America, she found herself called into Mission service. Out of interest and care for the Indians, she joined herself to Mr. Gamble, who sought a spouse to assist him in our Missionary labours amongst the Cherokees. There, by the Lord’s blessings, Mrs. Gamble’s gifts proved a particular benefit for the Scholars at Hold Hill.
Besides providing food and raiment for the scholars, keeping school daily, acting as physician, entertaining visitors, writing letters, & on Sunday teaching the Gospel, Mrs. Gamble kept, in the midst of this wilderness, a botanic garden, containing many exotic and medicinal plants listed by their Linnaean names. To her friends at Salem and Pennsylvania, besides, Mrs. Gamble sent between twelve and fourteen hundred specimens of dried plants, & near a hundred packets of seeds, several minerals, specimens of all the Indian manufactures of cane and a number of other curiosities.
In early March, 1815, the Gambles arrived at Hold Hill, the plantation of Mr. Hold, which is about eighty miles from Tellico Blockhouse, Tennessee. Mr. Hold was a half Indian but in his dress & color & conduct was quite like a white man. Mr. Hold had there two wives, who kept busy spinning and weaving cotton. He had ninety Negroes and a German overseer who took care of the plantation. Mr. Hold had about one hundred heads of horses. He traveled mostly to Charleston and Augusta, & many people came from afar to trade with him.
Mr. Hold resided in a fine brick house, the first of its kind in the Cherokee country, with a dignified doorway and bridge-like stairway that was much wondered upon by visitors. Hold’s house had a large and spacious yard with many beautiful roses and shade trees, & somewhere in this yard, it was rumored, lay a hidden treasure. The Georgia settlers say it is a trench of pure gold buried by the mound building Indians who dwelled in this valley in ancient times. These stories have never been confirmed. Beyond Hold’s home and fields, his mill at the creek, & his ferry at the Conasauga, all was perfectly wild.
Jinx forgot she was reading as she tunneled deeper into the world of the 1800s. Afternoon sunlight speckled the windows, filtered through a bank of pines. Unseen birds called from perches high in the treetops. Jinx drifted off to sleep with the weighty book pressed to her chest, reducing her breathing to shallow draws of dreamlike air.
TEN
Cheyenne fingered the fine lace curtains flowing against the glass in the Hold House master bedroom. She opened the chestnut wardrobe, unzipped her Louis Vuitton suitcase, and lifted out her dresses, blouses, and skirts. As she put her things away, Cheyenne imagined what life was like here two hundred years ago, when the home was illuminated by candlelight and the man of the house would have come home riding a steed. She pictured Chief James Hold, dark and chiseled like the male models on the covers of her historical romance novels.
The house was still. The room was quiet around her except for the scratching that seemed to come from behind one of the many shut doors.
She smoothed back the dampening hair at her forehead. She left the room, crossed the odd interior bridge, and descended the staircase, thrilling again to the echo of her heels on the floors of her dream home. She made her way into the drawing room, approached a window, and drew back the golden curtains. Her eyes fell on the ornate furnishings, on the fine film of dust. She thought fleetingly of something she had heard once on The View: 80 percent of dust is made up of dead skin cells that people shed in the course of daily life, which meant that in any person’s home—on the dusty bookshelves and windowsills—were bits and pieces of the resident’s former self. Did dust from a thousand lives settle into the crevices of an old house like this one, forming sediment as deep as an archaeological pit?
Cheyenne didn’t want to think so.
She untied another of her Jackie O scarves and let the hair of her ponytail fall gently to her shoulders. And before she knew what she intended, she found herself dusting the room. The silk scarf, thin and delicate, fluttered in Cheyenne’s hand, caressing the indentations of the carved fireplace mantel. Dust rose and fell again onto the oak floorboards, soft as a fresh snowfall. Through the windows, she could see that dusk had stolen in and settled itself upon the grounds. High in the cottonwood trees, catydids hummed. Cheyenne draped her sullied scarf across the Tiffany fireplace screen. The lateness of the hour surprised her. She had skipped every meal that day and was starting to feel it. She wondered if she would still be able to find a takeout salad in town.
Cheyenne stepped out into an evening humid after the day’s long heat. She locked the front doors behind her with the heavy notched key that Lanie Brevard had given her at the courthouse. Sweat pooled in the hollow between her breasts beneath the wine-colored silk. September was turning out to be one of the hottest on record in Georgia, with temperatures hovering in the nineties.
As she stood on the wide front porch fanning herself with an open hand, Cheyenne heard a rustling in the azalea bushes. She narrowed her eyes, scanning the shrubbery for rabbits, opossums, or rabid raccoons and vowing to buy a can of pepper spray at the next opportunity. But this was no small animal. The man who emerged from behind a utility shed raised his hand in a gesture of greeting—or maybe guilt, given that he was trespassing.
Cheyenne squinted in the dark, her heart racing to catch her panic. She backed into the porch’s shadows and fumbled for the door key to go back inside. Forged of heavy brass like the others on the ring, the key was a rock in her fist. She aimed it, hand shaking, at the lock. But what had been easy a moment ago seemed impossible now. The lock resisted as the stranger approached.
He walked the curving stone path beside the overgrown formal garden, then stopped twenty feet away from the front porch. Cheyenne fished the Blackberry from her purse, stabbed 911, then swore aloud in a whisper. Her cell phone got no signal here. The ridged mountains nearby and steep dip to the river made her new plantation house a pre-tech lockbox. She realized just how vulnerable these isolated fourteen acres of hillside made her. Toni’s sarcastic voice popped into her head as she imagined her friend commenting. Gone With the Wind meets Halloween.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
His deep voice and green uniform were little data feeds that let Cheyenne take a breath. She paused with a finger hanging over her useless cell phone. She recognized this man. The park ranger.
“The name’s Adam Battis,” he said, standing at a distance, slowly rolling the vowels on his tongue. “I’m with the Georgia Parks and Recreation unit of the Department of Natural Resources. I work here—used to. The Hold House was my responsibility, so I still keep an eye on the place. Seen anybody around here tonight?”
Cheyenne took in all she could of him through the evening shadows. He was tall and stood with a wide-legged stance that projected subtle confidence, an ease in his own skin that few men she knew possessed. His eyes flashed through the dusk with a dark intensity as he scanned the grounds.
“Besides you?” she said, raising her hands to her hips. That’s when she noticed he was holding a bag of pet food and a Maglite. She zoomed in on this odd detail, putting aside for a second the thought that he lived close enough to keep watch over the place—and to watch her—a possible comfort or possible worry. “We almost met this morning. Cheyenne Cotterell. Even if I were to accept your excuse for being at my house uninvited after dark, I can’t fathom why you have that bag.”
“For the feral cats. This plantation’s full of them, mostly in the outbuildings, though one or two have been known to slip inside the main house. They can hunt for themselves, but I don’t like to think of them being out here on their own for too long. Need some help with that?”
Cheyenne knew he meant the lock. What she didn’t know was whether he was a Good Samaritan or a disgruntled ex-employee who might go postal. Everyone who worked at the Hold House had been fired or reassigned when the place closed. There was bound to be some bad blood out there, some resentment at the recent turn of events.
“Not necessary. I’ve got everything under control. My husband is on his way from the city. I’m going to meet him for dinner now.”
The man looked skeptical, then amused, or so Cheyenne thought as she tried to read his eyes without seeming to.
“I understand.” He paused. “And if that husband of yours deserves you, he ought to give you a ring.”
Cheyenne turned her back on him to perform raising the key to the lock. She heard the tease of a smile in his voice and knew he had seen right through her. She felt a tug of interest against her will. He was smart. And attractive…And unemployed. But she would probably never see him again. If he was lucky, he would be reassigned to another state park.
Being a beauty had always made her bold. She considered turning to face the ranger, offering him an inviting smile and making a return joke about the nonexistent husband—or not. Some men liked the idea of sneaking around. Fine with her. She was comfortable with one-night stands, and in fact preferred them. Until she found the catch she would marry and make her mother happy with, men to Cheyenne were like those three-hundred-dollar throw pillows: necessary clutter. She could have this country ranger dumbstruck and panting in less than five seconds and be back at work on her dream home by morning. So, why not?
Cheyenne rolled her shoulders back and turned to hit Adam with her irresistible full-lipped smile. Her loose mane of straight hair flew as she turned, spilling loosely across her breasts.
It took her only a second, instead of the five she had planned on, to realize something had changed. The path was empty. The ranger was already gone.
Cheyenne felt disarmed. When had a man failed to linger as she walked away, failed to steal just one more look at her on the sly? Maybe he’s gay.
She bit the corner of her lip, fit her key into the lock, and reentered the house. The strangeness of the evening hadn’t diluted her hunger. Instead, it had made the gnawing in her stomach grow worse. She sat on the teal divan in the drawing room, replaying the scene in her mind until precisely thirty minutes had passed. She was giving the park ranger plenty of time to clear out. There was no way she wanted to lay eyes on him now. There was also no chance she would find a decent restaurant open this late in what Layla had called the boonies. She would have to find a grocery store if she wanted to eat anything at all.
