Lovely in Her Bones (23 page)

“Think this through,” Elizabeth said aloud wishing for a moment that she could turn and go back to the church. Whose responsibility was it anyway? She had nearly reached the end of the path—not far now. Soon Milo would figure out what she already knew, and by then it would be too late to salvage anything from the confusion that would follow. Elizabeth kept
going. She had to talk to the Wise Woman of the Woods.

Amelanchier’s cabin sat in green silence in the clearing. Elizabeth was relieved to see that no tourists had made the trek up the mountain. She stood in the shadow of a sourwood tree, watching a red-tailed hawk on a reconnaissance flight. It flew a back loop toward a thatch of pines, out of her line of sight. She wondered if she ought to search for Amelanchier, perhaps at the creek whose wind-sound barely reached her ears. She looked again at the still cabin, deep in shade; its doors and windows faced her like a blank stare.
She knows I am here
, thought Elizabeth.
She sees me.
She wondered how she knew.

As Elizabeth turned over her feelings, she was surprised to find that her reluctance to go on came from shyness rather than from fear. Elizabeth was never very direct with anyone. “Are you going to the kitchen?” she would say to Bill—
not
, “Bring me a glass of water.” She wondered if there were any diplomatic way to discuss multiple murder, but she was not afraid. Never once did she think: I could be next.

She walked slowly through the fescue grass, knowing that she was not within the cross hairs of a rifle sight, not bothering to move in stealth. She would not ring the yard bell or “rad” a note; and she must not think of Victor or Alex for the next half hour.

Elizabeth tapped on the door.

“It’s open!” Amelanchier’s voice sang out.

Elizabeth eased the door open and peered inside. The old woman sat at her plank worktable, scooping dried herbs into small plastic bags. “Making up a batch of bitters,” she told Elizabeth. “Tourists cleaned me out.”

She motioned her visitor toward the stool against the wall. “You want to tie them tags around the neck of the bags for me?” she asked, shoving a handful of garbage-bag ties across the table.

Elizabeth picked up the wire and plastic sealer and began to wind it around the neck of the bitters packet. “We have to talk,” she said softly.

“Makes the time pass more pleasant-like when you do,” Amelanchier agreed.

“I don’t think it will this time, Amelanchier, but it’s got to be done. Just remember, I’m here to help you.”

“And I’m grateful to you,” said the Wise Woman cheerfully. “Sure is a raft of these bags to tie.”

“No, I mean about saving the valley. I don’t want the Cullowhees to lose it to the strip miners. Especially after what I’ve heard about what your people have been through already. It wouldn’t be fair!”

Amelanchier nodded and went on stuffing plastic bags.

“You have to confess to the murders, Amelanchier,” said Elizabeth quietly. “And we have to come up with some excuse for why you did it, because if the truth comes out, you’ll lose the valley!”

“What truth is that?”

“The Cullowhees aren’t Indians.”

Amelanchier smiled. “Why, sure we are girl. It’s like I told you: we’re descended from the Unakas—”

“Yes! And
unaka
is the Cherokee word for white man! Now who are you really?”

Amelanchier wiped her hands on her apron. “Well,” she sighed, “I think you said something about saving the valley. Why don’t I brew us some tea and we’ll study about it?”

She drew out earthenware mugs and plastic spoons. “Now how can you tell what people is?” she asked as she worked. “That word don’t prove nothing.”

“You know how I can tell. I explained it to you the first time I came up here. I told you all about the skull measurements, and how different races show up as different numbers on the chart.”

“I thought the doctor was the only one could say for sure.”

“Dr. Lerche could tell just by looking at a skull. The rest of us don’t have his experience, so we have to plod along with charts, but we’ll get there. I did the measurements twice, and they don’t match the rest of the chart. When Milo checks my work and sees that I did it right, he’ll know, too. Then the secret will be out, and we don’t want that.”

“What about saving the valley?”

“If the investigation continues, the secret will come out. But if you confess, and if I fake the report, then everyone will get the answers they want, and that will be the end of it.”

“So we both tell lies?” smiled Amelanchier.

“Yes. Except for the fact that you killed Dr. Lerche and Victor. That’s true.”

The old woman looked as if she was going to deny it, but suddenly she sighed wearily and asked, “How come you to know?”

“Because it’s my fault!” said Elizabeth, close to tears. “I realized that it couldn’t have been Comfrey, because if he had known that the Cullowhees weren’t Indians, he wouldn’t have come asking for scientific proof. And you knew all about this project from me. You even knew that Victor was allergic to bees, because I told you! I even told you that he bragged about knowing who killed Alex, but I forgot to tell you what a liar he was! I don’t think he knew anything, really.”

“Well, I couldn’t take the chance. My people have had it too hard to risk losing everything to some no-account college boy. I reckon you want your tea sweet, don’t you? It’ll have to be honey. I don’t keep the white sugar. It’ll do you in.”

Elizabeth picked up her steaming mug and took a sip. It still tasted bitter, even with honey in it. “Who are you really? Does anybody know?”

“Only me. I’m the oldest one alive, so I remember
when folks knew. My grandfather still had the whip scars on his back.”

“You were slaves then? Run away from plantations?”

“Sold from the plantations,” said Amelanchier in a steady voice. “Run away from the Cherokees.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “The Cherokees? That’s impossible! They were an Indian tribe.”

“I reckon you think Indians is somebody who lives in a tepee and wears war paint and feathers,” Amelanchier snorted. “Well, I can’t speak for the ones out west, but I’m here to tell you that them Cherokees turned white faster than ash wood in a bonfire.”

“They owned slaves?”

“Yes, ma’am, and had big old farms to work ’em on. Took white last names, and got religion around 1800. Started intermarrying with the whites, too. I reckon they figured that if they got civilized, the white folks would let ’em be.”

“Did it work?” Elizabeth was hazy on Appalachian history, which wasn’t taught until fall semester.

“It did not. The Cherokee nation was good land, timber and gold, and good acres for farming. About 1830, when the settlers started running out of room on the coast, they commenced nagging the government to get the Indians off the good land, move ’em farther west.”

“The Trail of Tears,” whispered Elizabeth, suddenly remembering.

“Yep. Kicked right out, just like they want to do to us. All except five hundred who hid in the hills. It’s their descendants who have the Cherokee reservation today.”

“And were the slaves freed when the Indians were forced to move?”

“No, they were moved right on out with the cattle. But my people didn’t go. They run off and came back to the hills. Been here ever since. Most of ’em was half-breeds, mixed black and white.”

“And Indian?”

“I don’t believe so. They used to say that the Indians gave fifty lashes to any of their tribe who married a slave.”

“But why did you claim to be Indian?” asked Elizabeth, shuddering as she sipped her tea.

“Because between 1830 and very recently, being anything else was not healthy around here. If they’d said they were black, they could’a been took back in slavery till the War between the States, and even after that they was worse off than the Indians. At least we never had no lynchings to worry about.”

“But everyone knew you weren’t really Indian?”

Amelanchier nodded. “It was my gran’daddy, the Wise Man, who changed that. When I was a little bitty girl, he told folks that the best way to keep a secret is not to tell it out, so from then on, the children were told they was real Indians. When I go, the truth goes with me; I never told a one of my young’uns any different. I never knowed you could tell from the bones of the dead.”

“Not until I told you,” said Elizabeth. She mustn’t think about that now; she mustn’t! “I don’t want your people to lose the land. It isn’t fair.”

“I wish Comfrey would have told me before he asked you’uns to come here. But he thinks I’m an old woman who don’t know nothing but plants.”

“It can’t be helped,” said Elizabeth briskly. She wondered how much time they had before Jake found her. “We have to figure out some reason other than the truth for you to have killed them! How about this: you killed them because you didn’t want the bones of your relatives disturbed by irreverent white scientists?”

“I was thinking of that myself,” said Amelanchier. “More tea?”

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
she’s gone?” Milo demanded. “Did she leave a note?”

“No. I thought she must have gone down to the creek or something, but I’ve called and she doesn’t answer.”

“Have you checked the site?” asked Milo. He couldn’t think of any reason for her to go there, but it was the only possibility that occurred to him.

“No. Shall we go out there now?”

“In a minute. Comfrey Stecoah is coming along. What happened here that would make Elizabeth leave? What did the deputy want?”

“He found out I’m a Cherokee, and he wanted to see if he could scare me into a confession. On account of the tomahawk.”

Milo considered this piece of information. “Was Elizabeth frightened?” he asked finally.

“If you mean, did she think I was going to scalp her, I don’t think so.”

“Well, what was she doing?”

“She spent most of the morning remeasuring those skulls. That, and moping about how nasty you’ve been lately.”

Milo’s lips tightened. “I have not been nasty! I’ve been professional. Those measurements had to be done correctly, whether it hurt her feelings or not.”

Jake scowled back. “Yeah? Well, suppose she did them correctly in the first place?”

“I wish she had,” said Milo softly.

“Maybe she did,” said Dummyweed brightly. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he felt
that as representative of the law, it was time to say something, and that seemed appropriate.

It seemed to make sense to Jake. “Yeah,” he said evenly. “Maybe she did.”

Milo, who had never considered that possibility, was shaken. “What do you mean?”

“I sat here and watched her do those figures again for a couple of hours, man,” Jake informed him. “And she was getting the exact same answers she got the first time.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Why?” asked Dummyweed, interested.

They ignored him.

“The numbers don’t fit the chart,” said Milo, as if that settled it.

“Okay,” nodded Jake. “Assume for a moment that Elizabeth’s figures are right. That leaves two choices. One: that Alex faked or screwed up ten years of research on Plains Indians, or two …”

“That the Cullowhees are not Indians,” said Milo faintly.

“Take your pick,” shrugged Jake.

“Let me see those skulls!”

When Comfrey Stecoah found them in the common room some ten minutes later, Milo had measured two of the skulls, and his face looked as much of a death’s-head as any of them. Jake and the deputy were kneeling beside the crate, looking equally grim.

“Where’s the young lady?” asked Comfrey, looking around.

“You tell us!” Jake shot back.

“Elizabeth is missing,” Milo said as calmly as he could. “We’re going to check the site for her. Would you come with us, please?”

Comfrey shook his head, presumably at the strangeness of the female sex. “What made her take off?” he wondered aloud.

“I think it was a discovery she made this morning,
Mr. Stecoah. According to the tests she did”—he paused for effect—“the Cullowhees are not Indian!”

“Oh, is that all?” said Comfrey. “Shoot far, I could’a told you that.”

Milo, to whom live people were always a closed book—of hieroglyphics—thought he had gone mad. Surely he could not have just heard … “What did you say?”

“I figured it out for myself when I was doing research into the origin stories. That’s how I spotted you, Little Beaver,” he said, nodding at Jake.

“Don’t call me-”

“Reckon we belonged to your gang a long time back. But all the other folks around here still believe they’re Indians, and I never told ’em no different.”

“But why did you call us in to do the study if you already knew?” Milo’s head was spinning.

“Oh, for the government, son. To make it look good. We filed a formal request for recognition with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we had to send a list of things we were doing to substantiate our claim. Old maps, birth certificates showing residence in this county. I figured a scientific study would look real official.”

“But it would disprove your case,” said Milo patiently.

“Oh, shoot, that didn’t worry me! You don’t understand the government. I know you fellows always tack words like ‘probably’ and ‘generally’ into your reports. You never say anything flat out simple. Most folks don’t read all those technical reports nohow, and them that do may not believe ’em. The report would look good in our case file, though.”

“But we’ll have to say that you aren’t Indian, and they won’t give you the land.” Another thought struck him. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Well, judging from what I found out, I’d say we were escaped slaves from the Cherokee nation. We
got a family of Rosses up on the ridge; that’s a Cherokee last name.”

“So’s Stecoah,” murmured Jake.

“Is that possible?” asked Milo, turning to Jake.

“Sure. The Cherokees were the biggest slaveholders of any of the five nations. Bought ’em from the settlers.”

“Didn’t marry any, though,” said Comfrey.

“Usually not,” Jake admitted.

Milo shook his head incredulously. “So you’re a mixture of blacks and Anglo-Saxons. No wonder you didn’t fit the chart! And all this was for nothing, because you won’t get the land.”