Lover's Leap

by Pamela Browning

  “My parents’ families were two of the first to settle Scot’s Cove, so I thought I should learn something about the area. I never really appreciated my roots.”

  Jacob slammed the cash register drawer. “Yep, there’s a lot of history in these parts. Sometimes when the mist floats up from the valley, you can almost see the shapes of the people who have gone before. Indians, settlers, traders, trappers—all must have had their own stories to tell. Say, Maggie, didn’t you have some ancestor who had something to do with that Lover’s Leap legend hereabouts?”

  “Peg Macintyre. She fell in love with an Indian brave.”

  “So they say. I believe he came to a sad end. Was swept over Maidenhair Falls or something.”

  “I’m sure the story’s in the pamphlet, so by the time I come in here next time, I’ll be able to tell you all the details.” Maggie hesitated, reluctant to leave.

  “Mr. Pinter,” she said.

  “Jacob,” he corrected her.

  Maggie had a hard time calling this man, who seemed as old as the mountains themselves, by his given name. She had been calling him Mr. Pinter since before she could reach the countertop.

  “Jacob, then,” she said, and she was rewarded by his gaptoothed smile. “Jacob, do you know a man named Tate Jennings?”

  “Tate Jennings,” he said, chewing on the inside of his lip. “That’s the fellow who lives up above your place on Flat Top Mountain near Stoker’s Knob. Lives off the land.”

  “I met him yesterday.”

  “And what were you doing up by the Knob? That’s a good walk from where your place is.”

  “He—he was near the river,” Maggie said. She didn’t want to relate how they had actually met. It was too bizarre.

  “Eh? Well, that don’t surprise me none. Tate Jennings ranges from one place to another from what I hear. Got a big piece of land up there, used to belong to his dad, who went someplace up north years ago and left the place to rot. Died not long ago. Was a big surprise to all of us when his father left it to young Tate. We never knew Phil Jennings had a son.”

  “You knew Tate’s family?”

  “In a way, though in later years there was only Phil, who mostly kept to himself. Phil Jennings was a full-blood Cherokee whose folks owned that land before the government moved the Indians to the territory out west.”

  Maggie knew of this shameful episode in American history when seventeen thousand Cherokees had been rounded up from the mountains at gunpoint by soldiers, thrown into concentration camps, and their homes burned prior to resettlement in the west. They had been forced to march to Oklahoma in winter, and four thousand of them had died along the way.

  “Well, the Jennings family was one of maybe seventy households that didn’t have to go to Oklahoma. About four hundred Cherokee had bought land outside the Cherokee Nation around here, and they weren’t made to leave. Along with the Cherokees that escaped the soldiers and hid out in the woods, they eventually formed the eastern band of the Cherokee. Anyway, there’s no buildings on the Jennings property now, nothing but woods and rocks.”

  “Tate has apparently established his camp there. He told me that he’s on a leave of absence from Conso. He said he’s manager of their public relations office.”

  “Yup, that’s true. Used to be, there was hardly a week went by that you didn’t see that young Jennings fellow with his face plastered all over the television giving money to this charity or that one on behalf of Conso, glad-handing with politicians and explaining to reporters how the company was going to dig out a flat place on the east side of Breadloaf Mountain and put hundreds of tiny mobile homes with septic tanks up there.”

  “Mobile homes? On Breadloaf Mountain?” She was aghast.

  “That’s what Conso intends to do.”

  “Oh, no.” Maggie hadn’t heard of this before. Breadloaf Mountain was a wilderness area adjacent to Cherokee land; she had a spectacular view of the mountain from her cabin. She remembered hiking up Breadloaf with her mother every summer, dabbling her hot feet in the trilling little brooks that ran so merrily down the mountainside, taking pictures of the sun setting behind it with her first Instamatic camera. She couldn’t imagine those deeply forested slopes carved into a mobile home park.

  “You can’t slow progress, or so they say,” Jacob said. “’Course, there’s those who like to try.” He removed his glasses and rubbed them clean with the wrinkled bandanna he took from his back pocket.

  “You mean someone is trying to prevent it?”

  “Oh, the Kalmia Conservation Coalition, for one. They’ve got a lot of people stirred up about what Conso plans to do to Breadloaf. Trouble is, it ain’t easy to fight Conso. All the big guns are on their side.”

  A stout woman with two small rambunctious children came in, slamming the door behind her. “You got any spray starch?” she asked Jacob as the children galloped energetically around the counter.

  “To your left,” he told her, and Maggie gathered up her groceries thoughtfully. Jacob Pinter turned to shoo the kids away from the Tom’s Peanuts display, but before Maggie left, he called out, “The Kalmia Conservation Coalition is the name of the group. There’s a number you can call in the phone book if you’re interested.”

  She wasn’t interested in joining any coalition, Maggie thought as she loaded the grocery bags into the trunk of her sleek little BMW. But she hated the thought of Breadloaf Mountain’s being sliced up into bite-size portions.

  The external appearance of the quiet and unspoiled town of Scot’s Cove, which she’d loved ever since she was a child, had been changed for the better by Conso, she noticed as she drove down the main street and saw fresh paint on the storefronts and flower-filled planters along the curbs. New lampposts had replaced the old, ugly ones, and cozy park benches had been placed amid newly planted greenery. Conso was building a ski resort and several condominium buildings on nearby Candlelight Mountain; this would expand the tourist season to winter as well as summer. These were positive things that the company had done for the area.

  But she didn’t think she’d ever reconcile herself to the idea of Breadloaf Mountain’s development. The majestic east face of Breadloaf was visible through the trees as her car started up Flat Top Mountain. No rooftops broke the hazy symmetry of Breadloaf’s wilderness slopes; no roads scarred the peak. The more she thought about the mobile home park, the more angry Maggie became. How dare Conso destroy Breadloaf Mountain? Because destroy it they would, if they persisted with their plans. By the time she reached the cabin, she was furious.

  She carried her groceries inside and put them away, fuming all the while. As she was finishing, a knock sounded on the door, which was a surprise because she had no near neighbors and so far, no one had visited.

  “Who is it?” she called curtly.

  “Tate,” was the reply.

  She pulled aside the curtain on the window to see Tate Jennings standing outside. Today he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and he was carrying something, although she couldn’t see what. It wasn’t big enough to be her new canoe, she could tell that.

  She didn’t want to invite him in, so she released the bolt on the door and burst outside, embarrassed when she had to stop stock-still because there was nowhere to go.

  “Most people in these parts don’t lock their doors,” he said, smiling down at her.

  When she refused to smile back, his own smile faded. “I brought back the clothes I borrowed,” he said as he handed her the bundle he carried. Silhouetted against the mountains beyond with his thick rebellious mane flung back, Tate’s high forehead and prominent cheekbones were unmistakably Indian.

  Maggie looked down at the shirt and shorts. They brought back unwelcome memories of Kip and the weekends they had spent here. “You could have kept them,” she said.

  “I thought the person to whom they belonged might want them back.” He studied her, the expression in his eyes inscrutable.

  “The person to whom they belonged may be slogging around in the A
mazon jungle right now. For all I know, he might be wearing loincloths,” she said.

  “Oh. You didn’t mention that the clothes belonged to your boyfriend,” Tate said.

  “My ex-boy friend,” she reminded him.

  He nodded slowly as if he were thinking something over. “About last night…” he began, but then he stopped.

  “Forget it. I’m not in the mood,” she said. She shaded her eyes against the sun. “You know what I heard today? I heard that Conso is going to build a mobile home park on Breadloaf Mountain.”

  “It’s true,” Tate told her. “The development is called Balsam Heights.”

  “It’s bad enough that they’re building condominiums on Candlelight Mountain, but it already has a number of rental apartment buildings, so condos don’t seem out of character there. But Breadloaf has always been a wilderness area, a place where we would go to enjoy the spectacular scenery. Why, from Breadloaf Mountain, you can see Candlelight Mountain and Flat Top Mountain and the Little Deer River and, on clear days, all the way to Georgia. I might get used to condominiums on Candlelight, but not, by God, to mobile homes on Breadloaf.”

  “Top management at Conso believes that mobile homes are the best use of the property.”

  Maggie let out an exasperated sigh. “What makes Conso think that they can come into a place like this and chop it up into little pieces with no thought to what those of us who have been here for generation after generation think about it?”

  “Maggie, the county council, whose members represent the people, voted for the zoning.”

  “The council doesn’t represent me.”.

  “This region has had a tough time economically in the past several years. Building mobile home sites will mean work for construction companies and their workers. Managing the park and taking care of the grounds will employ a lot of people. The homes will be owned by vacationers who will pump money into the economy. There will be five hundred home sites—”

  “Five hundred!” She recoiled in horror, picturing row upon row of little boxes. “What can they be thinking of?”

  “Making money,” Tate said.

  Maggie folded her arms across her chest and squinted into the sun. “How can you work for them? How can you be a part of it?” Her tone was accusatory.

  Tate clenched his jaw, and the muscles worked. She saw a vein throbbing at his temple.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Look, I didn’t come over here to get involved in an argument about Conso. I came to return the clothes and to ask if you’d mind if I fished in that little pond above the bend in the river. It’s on your property, I believe, and there used to be a sign that said No Fishing.”

  “You mean the sign is gone?”

  “I didn’t see it, so I thought maybe you had changed your mind and let people fish there now.”

  She shook her head. “My father put up the sign years ago after the summer people who rent the A-frames near the highway began to consider it their own private pond. They’d throw their hamburger wrappers and foam cups around, and he and my mother and I had to clean up the mess.”

  “I’ll understand if you don’t want me fishing there,” Tate said.

  “I don’t mind if you do,” she said, which wasn’t at all what she’d intended to say. She’d thought that she didn’t want anyone intruding on her privacy, and now she was giving Tate Jennings carte blanche to come on her land.

  Then she surprised herself by asking, “Want to walk down to the pond with me? I need to see if that sign’s still around. I don’t want tourists taking the place over again.”

  He seemed as surprised as she was at the invitation. “Sure,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ll bring along a snack.” She went back in the cabin and took two shiny red Mcintosh apples from the fruit bowl on the dining room table and slid them into a tote bag.

  Today the air was rife with the green scent of growing things. Long skirts of wisteria trailed from a vine at the edge of the clearing, delicate lavender petals piling up on the ground below as the breeze tumbled them down. Above them the sky shone clear and bright, dotted with a few scattered clouds. They set off on the path toward the pond, the tote bag swinging against Maggie’s legs.

  Maggie didn’t look at Tate as she walked, but she was aware of him slightly behind her. She felt glad for his company now, which puzzled her. She had come to the cabin to be alone. Now she wasn’t, at least for the moment.

  The path to the pond was a shadowy tunnel beneath trees leafed out in their first flush of delicate green. Where the trees thinned out, tall grass had overgrown the path, and Maggie moved ahead of Tate to wade into it. Its sharp blades pulled at her socks, stabbed into her knees.

  The path culminated in a rocky tree-shaded clearing centered around a round pond, which had been formed long ago by damming up a creek branching off from the river. Once there had been a fence blocking access to it. Now the fence was gone, but there was still a sense of quiet and privacy here.

  “I’d forgotten how pretty this place is,” Maggie said.

  Tate bent and scooped up a tattered paper cup. He stuffed it in his pocket. “In the spirit of keeping it that way, I’ll pick up the garbage when I come fishing,” he said.

  “That’s a fair trade,” Maggie said. She set down the tote bag and walked around the pond, scuffing at patches of weeds and turning up nothing but shiny foil gum wrappers and a few discarded plastic diapers. In some places, the ubiquitous kudzu had almost taken over, swallowing up whole trees and turning them into unrecognizable shapes.

  “I don’t see the No Fishing sign anywhere,” Maggie said.

  “Someone probably stole it,” Tate said. He went over to the edge of the water where he stood on a rock and leaned over to peer into the shallows. “The big daddy of all catfish is sitting on the bottom, waiting for a worm on a hook,” he reported. “He’d make a decent dinner.”

  “With hush puppies,” Maggie said.

  “And corn on the cob. And iced tea. I wish I’d brought along a fishing pole.”

  “Didn’t the Cherokee charm fish out of the water?”

  He laughed. “Not quite. They threw pounded walnut bark into small streams to stupefy the fish. Then the fish floated to the surface of the water and were dipped out with a net. Apparently it was an effective way to catch fish, except when a pregnant woman waded into the stream. She was supposed to tie a strip of the walnut bark around her toe so she wouldn’t nullify the effect.”

  “Then I—” Maggie began, stopping just in time. She had almost said that she certainly couldn’t step into the stream when such an operation was underway since she herself was pregnant. She had almost spilled the beans about her Awful Predicament.

  Tate’s smile was warm. “Then you what?”

  “Then I suppose we’d better get busy and pound some walnut bark so you can catch old Big Daddy down there,” she amended, turning her head away so Tate couldn’t see her face.

  “No need for that. An ordinary fishing pole will do just fine,” he said.

  Maggie sat down on a stump and shook the apples out of their bag, handing one to Tate. He telescoped his tall frame until he sat on the ground, resting his back against the stump’s weathered bark. Maggie studied him surreptitiously as he took a bite of his apple.

  The sun washed his skin with a glaze of gold and blazed a shimmering path across his hair. She, who had only a few weeks ago considered herself madly in love with Kip Baker and in fact might still love him, felt a definite sexual attraction to the man who sat beside her now. The way his jeans clung to his thighs, the broad sweep of his shoulders, even the way he chewed his apple, seemed extraordinarily appealing. Although when he wore street clothes the veneer of civilization rested easily upon him, he carried an air of wildness about him. She looked away, a picture of him in his loincloth flashing through her mind.

  “You’re not eating your apple,” he said.

  “Do you want it?” she asked, offering it.
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  He shook his head and was quiet. “Your parents—do they come here often?” he asked after a while.

  “My mother died a few years ago, and she and my father had been divorced since I was ten. My father has a new family in Arizona. I never see him.”

  He swiveled his head to look at her. “Do you mind?”

  “I used to. Now it makes no difference. The only time I even think about him is when I’m at the cabin, which was part of the divorce settlement with the understanding that it would eventually be mine. It is, and I’m glad. My ownership of this property may be the best thing to come out of the divorce.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever see him again? Your father, I mean?”

  “I doubt it. I had hard feelings over his leaving my mother. And he never called me or wanted to see me, not even on my birthdays. By the time I was a teenager, I’d given up thinking that he would.” She could be philosophical about it by now.

  “At least your dad was around during your most formative years,” Tate said ruminatively.

  Something in his tone made her focus quickly on his face, but his expression offered no clue as to what he might be thinking. He seemed aloof and detached, and she remembered what Jacob Pinter had said, that everyone had been surprised to learn that Phil Jennings had a son. She waited for Tate to mention something about his father, but he didn’t. He only stared into the distance, his expression unreadable.

  Maggie would have liked him to volunteer information about himself, but apparently he wasn’t in the mood. Perhaps she’d rather not hear it anyway, she decided. Better to keep the conversation light and not too revealing. That way she wouldn’t be tempted to talk too much about her own situation.

  Besides, Maggie thought as she savored her first bite of the apple, this had turned into a good day for being lazy. For the first time in years, she had no appointments to keep and no place to go. Her life in Atlanta was hectic in the extreme, with frequent twelve-hour work days and after-hours appointments with clients. Sitting here and staring out at the tranquil surface of the pond with Tate quiet beside her, she dredged up an infinitesimal amount of guilt about not having anything that absolutely needed doing. Her thoughts drifted free, floating effortlessly across her consciousness. With any luck, Maggie thought as she allowed herself the luxury of sinking even further into this quiescent state, I could get used to this pace.