In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  “What?” Alex looked as if she’d just been doused with a bucket of cold water. “That store where your mother was killed?”

  Mary nodded. “I need to see it again.”

  For a moment Alex stood speechless, all the joy drained from her pretty face. “But why?” she finally asked. “All that happened so long ago.”

  Mary shrugged. “I just need to do it, okay? It’s like until I come to terms with all that, I’ll stay stuck here.”

  Alex studied the strong, confident woman who stood before her and remembered the Mary Crow she’d met twelve years ago, when an elegant older lady in a linen suit had literally pushed a trembling, denim-clad teenager with a battered white suitcase into her college dorm room. “Why, hello, dear,” the old lady had said in that soft Atlanta drawl that bespoke money and power and roots that stretched back to when Oglethorpe founded the colony. “I’m Eugenia Bennefield, and this is my granddaughter, Mary Crow. You two are going to be roommates!”

  Oh, no we’re not, Alex had thought. At the time she had been unable to imagine rooming for ten minutes with this quaking Mary Crow. Today she couldn’t imagine living her life without her. Since that moment they’d met in their dorm room, Mary’s quiet, unassuming groundedness had become an emotional safe harbor that she sailed into on a regular basis.

  “Did you tell your grandmother you were going up there?” she demanded, lifting an eyebrow.

  Mary shook her head. “I didn’t want to get Eugenia riled up—she reads too many mysteries as it is. Anyway, Alex, I just want to look around. After we go to Little Jump Off, I’ll totally devote myself to having fun.”

  “Promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.” Mary raised her right hand.

  “Well, okay.” Alex sighed, only too aware of how stubborn Mary could be. “I’ve never been able to stop you from doing anything else you were determined to do.”

  “Thanks.” Mary smiled.

  “Can I ask just one more question?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not planning on reopening any old murder cases, are you? Joan’s edgy enough about this trip. She wanted to take us to New York to see Tosca.”

  Mary laughed. “My only plan is to forget all about Cal Whitman and enjoy the woods.”

  They drove to another of the thousand condos that ringed Atlanta, where Joan Marchetti sat perched on the bumper of her car, cutting the price tags off a new, black all-terrain fleece-lined anorak. An equally new black backpack lay on the ground, resting beside her barely broken-in black boots, while a new black camp watch marked the time from her left wrist. Joan’s only garment over two weeks old was a battered black Yankees cap that shielded her eyes from the sun.

  “Wow!” Alex hooted as she pulled the BMW up beside her. “New York goes Primitive.” She got out of the car and sniffed the air extravagantly. “But you still smell like the perfume counter at Saks.”

  “Thank God.” Joan brushed cigarette ash off her black jeans. “I could’ve bought three new pairs of shoes for the money I spent on this camping gear.”

  “You look terrific, Joan, but you’re supposed to wear old ratty clothes when you camp,” Mary told her. “Not go out and buy new ones.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Joan wrinkled her nose at Alex’s tattered flannel shirt. “Well, I guess my wardrobe doesn’t extend to ratty.”

  “That baseball cap looks pretty ratty,” said Alex, turning and unlocking the trunk of the car.

  “It may look ratty, but it’s my lucky cap.” Joan had stuffed her dark curly hair under the cap, exposing a slender neck the color of fresh cream. “My dad sent it to me the first time the Yankees beat the Braves in the World Series.”

  “Sounds like you’re ready to camp to me.” Mary hoisted up Joan’s new backpack and put it in the trunk.

  “But I wasn’t ready to spend so much money.” Groaning, Joan climbed in the backseat and waggled the anorak’s price tag. “This better be a great weekend, you guys.”

  “When have our road trips ever not been great, Joan?” Alex laughed as she lowered the top of the convertible. “You’re too much of a homebody. If it wasn’t for Mary and me, you would just hole up in this condo every weekend, reading briefs and baking lasagna.”

  “I need to read my briefs. And I like baking lasagna. I especially like having Hugh Chandler over to eat it!” Joan protested ferociously, but she knew that Alex was right. Even though she’d lived in Atlanta for nearly nine years, she still felt intimidated by the hot, sprawling city with its honey-drip accents and countless Peachtree streets. Were it not for these two women, she probably would spend most of her time cocooned with Verdi and Puccini in the icy cool of her apartment.

  “You can have Hugh Chandler over next weekend, Joan,” promised Mary. “This weekend is Mother Nature’s gift to girl attorneys who labor in the trenches of the law!”

  “All right, already.” Joan rolled her eyes. “Let’s go!”

  Alex pulled out of the parking lot and drove north. The morning begged for escape. The hot muggy fist of summer had loosened its grip on Atlanta, leaving behind a dry warmth that would linger until the first cool damp of fall inched its way down from Canada. With the CD player blaring, the three women sped along a chalk-colored interstate until it became U.S. 19, the ancient two-lane that connects the red clay hills of upper Georgia to the mountains of North Carolina.

  The women drove on, Alex and Joan singing along to a Lucinda Williams CD. Mary smiled, listening as Joan’s voice soared while Alex croaked along, struggling to stay in the right key. As their ears began to pop from the altitude, they crested a steep hill at the little town of Dahlonega, and the Grange-calendar landscape abruptly vanished. The clipped-green farms and sloe-eyed cows suddenly gave way to hazy blue mountains that rose before them, beckoning and forbidding at the same time.

  “Are those our mountains?” asked Joan from the backseat.

  “That’s the beginning of them,” Mary replied. “The Old Men, we call them.”

  “Gosh, I thought they’d be rocky and topped with snow,” Joan said. “They look hazy. Soft, somehow.”

  Oh, but they’re not, thought Mary. The same tiny chill she’d felt in the courtroom rippled through her as she scanned the deceptive-looking peaks. Soft is the last thing the Old Men are.

  As the road traversed one of the few patches of flat ground, Alex spotted a lopsided billboard that commanded one corner of a small cow pasture.

  “Hey, Joan.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Y’all have anything like that in Brooklyn?”

  The billboard asked, in flaming red letters, Where Will You Spend Eternity? Heaven or Hell??? Wavy lines had been drawn around hell to indicate heat and an appropriate Bible verse was lettered underneath in smaller, more sedate script.

  Joan frowned as the weathered sign flew by. “Jeez, I thought Sister Mary Xavier was nuts. Who on earth would put up a billboard about the afterlife?”

  “Oh, the same folks who drink strychnine and kiss rattlesnakes,” Alex teased. “Didn’t Mary warn you? They eat Catholics for dinner up here. Roast ’em on spits in their backyards.”

  Joan started to object, but Mary turned around and gave her a wink. “Don’t worry, Joan. The worst thing people eat up here is possum. And that’s only when they can catch one.”

  “Oh, yeah? For a minute you had me worried. You know it’s not too late to catch a flight to La Guardia. If we turned around now, we could be at the airport by three. We could eat calamari at my dad’s restaurant tonight and see Tosca tomorrow.”

  “You’re such a wuss, Joan,” said Alex. “You know you’ve always wanted a walking tour of Hillbilly Heaven. Think of what you can tell the folks back home.”

  “Right.” Joan fumbled in her purse and pulled out another cigarette. “I spent a thousand dollars to go sleep outdoors with my two crazy friends.” She lit the cigarette and hunched forward. “Hey, Mary, show me again where we’re going. I called my mother this morning and I couldn’t even remember the name o
f the place.”

  Mary pulled a map from her purse and pointed to a tiny dot on the North Carolina–Tennessee border. “There. Santoah.”

  Joan frowned. “No kidding? I told my mom it was Nanook or Nirvana or something. She’s already started lighting candles to the Blessed Virgin.”

  “It’s in the Nantahala National Forest.” Mary pointed to a pale green blob. “This shaded area here.”

  “But that must be a million acres.” Joan traced the sprawling green outline with her finger. “It goes on over into, uh, Tennessee.”

  “Right. It’s the Cherokee National Forest there,” explained Mary. “But it’s the same big stretch of trees.”

  “And this is where you grew up?”

  Mary nodded. “We lived in Atlanta until my dad was killed in Vietnam, then my mom came back home.” She tried to picture her father, but she had been only four when he died. She remembered the tautness of his cheek against hers, a laundry-starch smell, his voice singing her a lullaby in the dark, Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, all the pretty little horses . . .

  Still looking at the map, Joan took a long drag on her cigarette. “You come back here a lot?”

  “Not since my mother died.” Mary’s words fell flat on the sunny air. She closed her eyes and concentrated fiercely on the pungent smell of Joan’s menthol-laced smoke. When she opened them, Joan was scowling.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever known what your mother died of, Mary.”

  For a long moment no one spoke; then Mary replied, choosing her words with care. “My mother didn’t die of anything, Joan. My mother was raped and murdered.”

  “Oh, jeez.” Joan shrank back in the seat. “How awful. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t realize it was anything like that—”

  “That’s okay. It’s old news.” Mary kept her eyes straight ahead.

  “Hey, Mary. Tell us again where we’re going.” Reliably, Alex booted the conversation back up onto happier ground.

  Mary cleared her throat. “A spring called Atagahi. Not many people know about it. My mom took me there a lot as a child. We used to soak in it like a hot tub. The Cherokees think it’s visible only to those who need it. If you wash in Atagahi’s waters, your wounds will be healed.”

  “Cool,” said Alex. “You can jump right in and forget about the State of Georgia versus Calhoun Whitman, Jr.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Mary replied, the hate-filled faces of Cal Whitman and his brother Mitchell flashing before her.

  They sped on through the cooler, pine-scented air. The foothills grew steeper, and overall-clad farmers whittled beside Chevy pickups laden with mountain apples and sourwood honey for sale. Twice they had to stop to let Joan’s queasy stomach calm down. Then Mary pointed down a gravel lane that sloped off the paved highway. “Turn left, Alex. There’s a place I need to visit down there.”

  Alex turned the Beemer down the lane, gravel popping under the wheels of the car. The road skirted the base of a mountain, then crossed a shallow creek and broke into a meadow bright with goldenrod. On the far side of the field stood a small clapboard church. Horton’s Chapel U.M.C., read a hand-lettered sign by the front door.

  “Gosh!” Alex gazed at the bright white church sparkling against the golden meadow and dark green pines. “This looks right out of Norman Rockwell.”

  “Park over there,” Mary directed. “Near the cemetery.”

  Alex circled the church, pulling the BMW under a sprawling oak tree with a tire swing dangling from its lowest limb. Mary pointed at a split-rail fence halfway up the hill. It enclosed a number of white tombstones that erupted like jagged teeth from the thick grass. “My mom’s buried up there. I’d like to have a look at her grave.”

  Alex glanced at her friend, trying to divine the expression in Mary’s smoky hazel eyes. “Should we come, too? Or would you rather be alone?”

  “No. Please come.” Mary smiled. “I’d like you both to see it.”

  They got out of the car and walked up the hill, Joan and Alex following Mary through a cemetery that could have been in any churchyard in America, except for the names on the tombstones. Where most places you’d find Joneses or Smiths or Johnsons, here lay Owles and Saunooks and Walkingsticks and Crows. The three young women threaded their way through the graves. At a simple granite slab, Mary stopped.

  Martha Joy Crow, the inscription read. 1948–1988 . Joan’s eyes filled with tears. “Gosh, Mary. Your mom was only forty.”

  Mary looked down at the gravestone. Alex had heard this story a thousand times. Joan had never heard it. Mary swallowed hard and began to speak.

  “My mother died in the late afternoon on April eleventh. She was working in Norma Owle’s store. Someone came in and did the Big Three—robbery, rape and murder.” Mary rattled off her official version of her mother’s death. She’d learned long ago that if she said it fast, it tasted not quite so bitter coming out of her mouth. “Not an uncommon crime for most of America. But a very uncommon crime for here.”

  “Did they ever catch her killer?” Joan spoke in a whisper.

  “No. They scoured these mountains for weeks, but they never caught anybody. Finally they decided it was just some drifter who needed money for drugs. Nobody could ever explain why he needed to rape and kill my mother, too.” Mary’s eyes flashed. “Most of the money had spilled out of the cash register and was left behind on the floor. The only thing I saw missing was her Saint Andrew’s medal.”

  Joan frowned. “Don’t you mean Saint Christopher?”

  “No. Saint Andrew. It was my father’s. His grandfather had given it to him, and he’d worn it the whole time he was in Vietnam. They sent it back with his body. A knight, fighting a dragon. My mother put it on just before his funeral. She never took it off.”

  “Jeez, that’s terrible.” Impulsively, Joan wrapped her arms around Mary. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine living through a hell like that.”

  Mary hugged Joan back. “It was awful,” she agreed quietly. “But it’s history, now.” Over Joan’s shoulder she smiled at Alex, remembering all the nights they’d lain awake in the dorm, Mary going over each detail of the murder scene and the hunt for her mother’s killer a thousand times, Alex listening with unlimited patience and a diminishing pile of PayDay candy bars. Mary knew that without Alex, she wouldn’t have survived the first week at Emory, much less the ensuing twelve years.

  She squeezed Joan, then relaxed her embrace. “Alex pulled me through the worst of it.”

  From the pocket of her jeans she withdrew a plastic bag filled with six smooth, speckled stones. “The old Cherokees honored their ancestors with things of the earth,” she explained. “I picked these stones from the little creek that runs behind my apartment in Atlanta.”

  Mary knelt down and kissed each small stone. Their grainy coolness against her lips brought that long-ago spring day rushing back—Reverend Hunt reading from his Bible, the redbud tree sending tiny magenta stars up against the darkening sky, the mourners huddling in raincoats around the dank hole in the ground that would embrace her mother for eternity. She’d felt like a murderer herself then. If she had just gone straight home that afternoon, this wouldn’t have happened. She would have been there. She would have stopped whoever had done this. Don’t go, Mama, she’d cried silently as they’d lowered the simple coffin into the earth. Please don’t leave me.

  Mary made a small pile of the stones just beneath her mother’s marker. “Sudali, Mama,” she whispered. “Six. Six stones for six convictions.” For Hance Jordan, who poisoned his young wife to collect her insurance; for Wayne Creech, who fatally stabbed his girlfriend for not wearing a bra; for four more beyond them. One more, and she could place the seventh stone on her mother’s grave. Seven. The number her people regarded as magical and redemptive as any plunge in a Baptist pool. One more stone, and Mary Crow would be at peace.

  She stared at the little pile of six stones for a moment, then she rose and looked at her friends.

  “Okay,” she
told them. “I’m done.”

  “Are you sure?” Alex asked. “We can stay longer if you want—Joan and I can wait for you in the car.”

  “No.” Mary smiled as a shadow passed from her eyes. “I’m done. Let’s go eat an early lunch, ladies. We’ve got a lot of mountains to climb before dark.”

  FOUR

  SOMEWHERE IN THE NANTAHALA FOREST,

  OCTOBER 2000

  Death has a stink to it. It’s blood and kum and the sea and the sour scent of a man humiliated, pleading for his life. It’s sticky on your hands, and if you cram your fingers in your mouth and suck them like chicken bones, all that sweet death-marrow goes straight to your brain and makes you feel like God.

  Henry Brank laughed as he pulled the knife from the rabbit’s neck. “This is a real piece of luck, Buster,” he said to the snake that lay coiled inside the bag he’d carried over his shoulder all morning. “I thought for sure we’d only have cornbread tonight.”

  The snake made no response. Brank tied the rabbit’s back legs together with a piece of rawhide and slung it, along with the sack and his shotgun, over his left shoulder. He wiped the blood from his knife, stuck it in his boot and continued climbing up the slippery, pine-straw-covered switchback that would eventually take him to the top of Cowcamp Ridge. He’d walked east since dawn, and the once-warm sun had disappeared into a thick gray cloud bank that seemed to float up from the mountains themselves.

  “We’ll check the weather at the top of this ridge, Buster,” Brank huffed, his legs burning from the near-vertical climb.

  They crested the ridge just as the wind began to whip raw and sting his face. Out of breath, Henry dropped his gear next to a rotting log and looked out over the acres of forest spread below. Only the dark tops of pine trees poked up from the thick white stew of fog.

  “Shit. Whited out.” He turned northward and sniffed the wind. The sharp-iron smell of cold tingled his nostrils. Winter was coming, and soon. In a couple of weeks these gold mountains would turn a sullen brown, then pale blue snow would dust them like sugar. Right now, though, opaque clouds bloated with water swirled down from the sky, obscuring everything from trees to entire mountaintops.