When I pass, you are to take my body home to Cherokee—to the Qualla Boundary. I want to be laid to rest in the ground where my friend, my love, my Cowney will one day join me. If he should pass before me, please find his resting place and bury me there so that our bones will forever mingle, free of everything except our spirits.
Gvgeyu,
Lishie
The place I am taking you is of her choosing. The story I am telling you is of her choosing.
I did go off to college. I found out who I was supposed to be just like Essie wanted—just like I wanted, eventually landing back here in these mountains. I loved other people, but never ever stopped loving her, as is clear to you now. Just about everyone I have ever loved is gone now. Everybody except Jones. He’s been a constant friend. His grandson runs the trading post, and it’s full of tourists who get mad because he refuses to sell them the plastic tomahawks and garish headdresses they are promised from television and movies. Jones and I sit out on the porch where Tsa Tsi and I used to sit. We’re the old men telling the stories of a roaming monkey now, trying to avoid the obvious attempts of tourists to slyly take our picture as evidence that Indians—“real, live Indians”—really do exist.
But before all that, I was just a boy trying to be a man who received a package from Lee several weeks after Bud’s funeral. It contained, as I had predicted, a charming letter of recommendation for my college applications and, less expected, a plastic bag containing the bone. The lab had marked the bag in big black letters: HOMO SAPIENS. There was other, less official writing on the bag—notes regarding an inconclusive origin, an estimated decomposition age of three months, and red letters marking: Approved for Release. I hadn’t expected to see the bone again, and certainly not to have it returned marked human. In fact, I still wondered if they had been mistaken, that I held in my hands the remnants of Edgar, a being so closely related he managed to fool science.
I took the bone and buried it just inside the cave of the waterfall where I had seen the wounded bear. I could not think of any place more appropriate. Science told me its relative age and origin, but I also can remember it speaking for itself—telling me a story too familiar to ignore. These mountains have ingested our bones for centuries so that we might renew this soil with memory—memories of our people—our strengths and weaknesses—our losses and loves. We are the DNA strands criss crossing these hills. We are not unlike periodical cicadas that feed on roots for years until time to swarm, singing songs of renewal, and shedding their exoskeleton so that they can be reborn into greater beings. Those who know nothing of this land might see these empty remnants as proof of extinction; but those who know the stories of this place simply wait for them to wake from hibernation, thrumming their return in unified song.
This land is ours because of what is buried in the ground, not what words appear on a paper—even this paper. However, it can also be said that bones shift and decay. Blood dries and flecks. Flesh withers. And the only thing separating us is the stories we choose to tell about them.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, sgi to this land I call home and am blessed to write about. Sgi to those who fought and fight to protect it. To Evan, Ross, and Charlie, your gifts of time, encouragement, and two quality sets of noise-canceling headphones have stayed me, both in my writing and in life. Mom and Dad, thank you for raising me with a healthy balance of imagination and reality. Dawn, Tim, Ben, Charles, Katherine, and Heather, as my earliest and most consistent readers, your suffering is heroic. I hope I have made you proud. I hope you still want to read this book. To my writing community, teachers, colleagues, and students (yes, all of you), your stories, your spirits inspire my own. To the University Press of Kentucky, Hindman Settlement School, Rebecca, and Brent, thank you for believing in my voice—for lifting it up. Silas, I am privileged by your care, tenderness, keen eye and ear, and most important, your honesty. I will never understand how I came to be blessed enough to work with such a special, talented soul. Thank you for “getting it” from day one and never losing sight of it. And finally, I must acknowledge and honor my fabled muse, as one should always appreciate an indefinable inspiration. You arrive on song notes, stir in trail dust, and linger in quiet moments on cabin porches. I am grateful you continue to stop by and sit a spell.
Even As We Breathe Page 26
