The Day of Small Things (8 page)

“… and when John pulled his wife off the mule, she hardly seemed to know it but he made her a bed on their blankets and brewed a little tea with some dried pennyroyal and peppermint leaves they had brought with them. The soldiers come round with a ration of dry biscuit and water and then they set up their camps in a ring outside where the Cherokee were.

“John soaked some biscuit in water and put little soft bits in Nancy’s mouth but she didn’t have the strength to swaller. And before morning come, she died in his arms.”

“Did John Goingsnake cry?” I ask though I know the answer. Thinking of the poor Injuns makes me want to cry.

“No, he did not, though he had loved his Nancy better than ary thing. He sat there with one hand on Nancy’s cooling face, holding his sleeping baby and looking out across the river that was shining silver in the moonlight. It was the fall of the year—a dreadful dry season. He could see the rocks of the river just a-sticking up, looking most like stepping-stones all the way across the water. And that gave him an idea.

“ ‘Nancy,’ says he, speaking low to her spirit which he knows is still about, ‘I mean to stay here in the mountains with you but to do that I’ll have to leave you to be buried by these others. If I get away, I vow I’ll come back when it’s safe and sing over your grave.’

“And with that, he picked up the babe and strapped her to his back. She stirred and whimpered but didn’t wake, just drooped her head down heavy on John Goingsnake’s shoulder. All round, folks was sleeping hard, wore out
with the walking they’d done. Even the soldiers who was meant to be keeping guard was setting down, dozing by their campfires. Then, quiet as a hunting cat, John Goingsnake creeps to the water’s edge and steps out onto a rock. The moon is making a path for him across the water and he hears a singing in his head as he steps to the second rock and then the third.”

Raven Mockers

(Least)

G
ranny stops in the middle of the story and looks to the sky where the light is starting to fade. “Least, honey,” she says, “reckon it’s time for you to do the milking? I thought I heard ol Poll bawling just now.”

Granny Beck always likes to do me this way but I know she is just funning. “Granny Beck,” I say, “you can’t leave poor John Goingsnake and his little baby in the middle of that river. You got to finish the story—there’s plenty of time yet—please, Granny!”

I go over to Granny and put my arms around her. “We got to get them safe, so that baby can grow up and learn about the Cherokee Magic, ain’t that so? Besides, I got three more poppies to finish.” I lay my cheek next to hers and wait.

She hugs me tight. “All right, honey, we’ll finish up the story afore you do your milking.”

I go back to my chair and Granny opens and closes her fingers a few times, then takes her rug machine and goes back to punching in the black strips. She picks up the story and now it is almost like she is remembering something that happened to her—not just a story someone told her.

“Well now, John Goingsnake, he stood there in the middle of that broad river, wondering what to do. He could see rocks like stepping-stones to the other side but betwixt him and the next rock there was a stretch of deep rushing water. He studied the distance and knew it was too far to make a leap for. ‘No telling,’ thinks he, ‘how deep the water is here in the middle where it runs all the year. Strong as it’s running through this narrow channel, I fear was I to try to cross, the child and me could be swept away. Though,’ says John Goingsnake to hisself, ‘if me and the babe was took by the river, why, then we’d be with Nancy. Could be that’s the best thing for us.’

“On his back, the baby stirred and made a little sound like she was a-feared, a little whining sound, and John Goingsnake stood there thinking on the meaning of that sound. A cloud passed over the moon and a hoot owl called and he studied on the meaning of them things too.”

Granny looked over at me, real solemn. “That’s how Injuns do; they look fer meaning in everything they see or smell, everwhat they touch or taste or hear. And being as John Goingsnake was a Cherokee wise man, he was uncommon good at knowing what the world around him was saying. But just then, standing there in the middle of the river on that long-ago night, John Goingsnake was plumb bumfuzzled.

“And then the moon come out and he looked down at that stretch of water at his feet and he was dumbstruck—
for right there in front of him, where a minute before hadn’t been nothing but fast-moving water, there was a great almost flat rock with the water curling around it. Without stopping to think, John Goingsnake stepped onto the rock. And then a quare thing happened—the rock begun to move.

“John Goingsnake stood there, bending his knees and leaning this-a-way and that to keep his balance atop that swimming rock. His baby was safe on his back and John Goingsnake looked down to see the moonlight and the water rippling round the soles of his boots. It seemed to him like a long, long time in happening but at last the swimming rock brought him close enough to the other side that he could jump for it. And that’s what he done—took a deep breath and leapt onto a big ledge where he fell to his knees.

“When he got to his feet, he turned round just in time to see the rock what he had rode on sink out of sight and then and there he made a special song to thank the Creator for sending the swimming rock—”

Just like I always do, I say, “Granny Beck, a rock can’t swim! I bet it was one of them great big turtles I seen near the river.”

And Granny reaches over and smoothes my hair down and she says, like always, “Whatever it was, honey, it was Cherokee Magic—at least that’s the way I heard it. You reckon you could make a turtle carry you across the water?”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer but goes on with filling in the black and I go back to punching in the red for the poppies. This is the scary part of the story, and even though I know how it comes out, I have chill bumps all up my arms as Granny Beck goes on.

“Now, John Goingsnake didn’t stop to look back to see the campfires on the other side; he lit out up the riverbank and into the woods. There was a trail running along the river and turning up along a big creek but he knowed not to follow it for fear of meeting up with one of the white farmers that he knew must live up that way. Though it was nighttime, the moon was so bright that hunters and such might be traveling round.”

I think of Mama walking up the road soon and hope that I can get the milking done before she gets back. But I will hear the end of this story first, even if it means a whupping.

“So John Goingsnake set off, climbing up and up into the deep woods. He reckoned maybe he could lose hisself up there for a time, till the soldiers down at the river had moved on. Then maybe, he thought, he could make his way back to his home mountains, where he knowed there was others in hiding. He figgered he could travel along the ridgetops and be back in his own country before too long.

“On and on he went, climbing through woods so steep that he was on hands and knees most of the time. It seemed to him that he’d been climbing for an hour or more when he came to a holler setting like a big bowl betwixt two ridges. A branch run down the middle and big old laurel bushes was thick and dark all above it. Just then the baby on his back stirred and begun to whimper and John Goingsnake knowed he would have to stop and feed her something and change out the moss in the rags he had wrapped around her little bottom—what we call hip-pens.”

“How old was Baby Rebekah, Granny?” I know the answer, but this is part of the way we do the story.

“She was not yet a year of age—and still a tittie baby, getting all her nourishments from her mama. Now that her mama was gone, what would John Goingsnake do?”

I bust out with what comes next, wanting to hurry on to the good part. “John Goingsnake, he stops near a branch and gets him some water, and after he cleans the baby’s bottom, he pounds up some of that dry biscuit and mixes it with the water in a drinking gourd he’s carrying. And all the time, that baby’s fussing and squalling and he’s telling her hush. And he dips a finger in the biscuit mush and puts his finger in Baby Rebekah’s mouth for her to suck on. And at first she don’t like it and spits it out but then she begins to swaller some. And then …”

I wait, for Granny tells this part the best. She laughs a little and goes on with the story.

“And then, when the baby’s swallered all she will and John Goingsnake is putting her on his back, he hears a crunching and a crackling and knows that something is climbing up the way he come. His heart begins to thump for he fears the soldiers have followed him. High above the laurel, he can see that the sky is getting lighter.

“Without waiting to see who it is coming towards him, John Goingsnake, with Baby Rebekah on his back, makes a run for the laurel and dives in.

“The laurel bushes are old and their trunks are so twisty and close-growed that in some places John Goingsnake has to get down on his belly and slip along like a real snake to get through. Behind him he can hear voices. It sounds like two men and when he looks back he sees the glitter of brass buttons in the pale morning light that is sifting down through the dark leaves.”

Granny’s fingers wiggle as she shows how the sun came down through the laurel leaves on that long-ago day.
She sets back in her chair, the rug machine in her lap, and stares into the past. Her voice drops down low and scary for what is to come.

“Now John Goingsnake is certain sure that it is the soldiers coming after him, and though he is in black despair, he keeps scrambling and sliding, deeper and deeper into the thickest part of that laurel hell. He moves along like only an Injun can do, making hardly a sound. But just then Baby Rebekah decides they are playing a funny game, and no matter how he tries to hush her, she keeps on laughing and babbling. And still John Goingsnake hears the voices following him … closer and closer and closer … till it seems they’re at his back.”

I shiver hard. The light is going fast and I can barely make out Granny’s face. She is a voice coming out of the dark.

“And then, along with the baby’s laughing and the growling voices coming up on him fast, John Goingsnake hears another sound. At first he thinks it is his heart, beating hard and fast in his breast, but then he realizes that the sound is coming from somewhere a little ways deeper in the laurel. And it is the sound of drums.”

(Least)

P
lease, Granny, tell the rest of the story. John Goingsnake heard drums way back in the laurels and then what happened?”

My last poppy is all filled in and I pick up some of the black strings and skooch over closer to Granny Beck and start to working on the background right next to her. I can’t hardly see but it feels good to set so near and feel the warmth of my granny’s body through her skirt and breathe in her oak leaf smell.

“Well, honey,” she says like she always does, “now, you may not believe this next part. But this is how John Goingsnake told it.

“The drums was louder and louder and he followed the sound, sometimes crawling, sometimes walking crouched down, through the twisting roots and branches till he came to a kind of a clearing there in the midst of the laurels. Over to one side was a great rock cliff that reared
through the green leaves and there down low was an opening—broad as two men though not but knee high—and it was from in there that the sound of the drums was coming.