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.
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-
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
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?”
