Talking Leaves

by Joseph Bruchac

  CHAPTER 10

  My Mother Knows

  I am not sure how my mother does it, but she often seems to know exactly what I am thinking. So, when I come stomping into the house after my unsuccessful attempt to play chunkey with my friends, she does not ask me what is wrong.

  She simply pulls back one of the chairs at the table and nods her head toward it as she wipes her hands on her apron as if dusting it off.

  Sit.

  Then she places a steaming bowl of succotash in front of me. It is flavored with bacon and not bear fat—since there are no longer any bears left for us to hunt. They have all been killed or driven away by the Aniyonega, the white men. Those bears that survived, the old people say, have all taken refuge within their stone lodge in the heart of the tallest mountain.

  That is such a sad thing. The bears and the humans have always been meant to be together. One of our oldest stories tells that long ago the people were hungry and had nothing to hunt. So one whole clan of humans, the Anitsaguhi, got together and decided to sacrifice themselves. They turned themselves into the first bears and gave the humans permission to hunt them.

  Of course, like all beings that are hunted, they only gave away their flesh. As everyone knows, when a game animal is killed, its spirit survives and it can come back to life again in another body. Still, it can be a painful thing to die. And that was a great sacrifice for the Anitsaguhi to make. So it can truly be said that bear meat and the bear’s sweet fat is one of the greatest gifts that was ever given.

  But I only think of that story for a brief moment. That is because when my nose takes in the scent of my mother’s incredible succotash, that wonderful aroma drives everything else out of my mind.

  I pick up the wooden spoon and taste it. Ah! My mother’s blend of corn and beans—cooked with fresh churned butter, seasoned with just the right amount of black pepper—is nothing less than perfect. She plops down another dish with several round, golden brown fritters in it. Corn pone! And then, as I am stuffing the first of those corn pones into my mouth, she fills a tall mug with sassafras tea and puts it next to my bowl.

  When I finish that bowl of succotash, my mother fills it a second time. And a third. I eat so much that my stomach sticks out like a raccoon’s belly after it has finished robbing a goose nest. I almost eat too much—but not quite. There’s room for two pieces of cobbler made with some of the dried apples that were quartered last fall and hung in strings from the rafters over the stove.

  I wish I could just keep eating. I wish I could just eat and eat and not think. But I can’t. And now that I’ve scraped the last of the cobbler from the wooden bowl, I realize, with a sigh, that none of my problems have gone away. Things are just as they were, if not worse.

  I am still the son of Sequoyah, the man even my friends think is engaging in the worst sort of bad medicine.

  My mother still has not said anything. But she does raise one eyebrow as she looks at me, sitting as I am with my chin on my chest and nothing but the crumbs from the big meal I’ve just consumed on the table in front of me.

  She’s ready to listen.

  I’m not ready to talk about it. How can I be? I have no idea what to say. I don’t even know what questions I want to ask.

  I lift my head.

  “Wado, agi etsi,” I say. “Thank you, my mother.”

  I force a smile on to my face. “You are the best cook in Willstown.”

  That brings a smile to my mother’s face, in spite of her concern. If you want to make your mother happy, tell her that you like the food she has made for you. It always works.

  But now what? How long can I hold this smile before the weight of my worries pulls it back down into a frown?

  I stand up.

  “I . . . I am . . .” my eyes dart around the cabin.

  What am I going to do? I’ve done all the chores that needed doing. It is not yet time to milk the cow and my mother already brought in the eggs from our hens. There’s nothing in the slop bucket to feed the hogs. And I mended every place in the fences that needed work.

  Then I catch sight of my cane pole leaning in the corner. “I am going fishing!”

  I walk purposefully over to the pole, pick it up. I can see out of the corner of my eye that my mother is nodding.

  Good, she is thinking. His mind is on getting food, not going back again to his father.

  “Wish me luck,” I say as I go out the door. “I will bring back a big fat catfish for you to fry.”

  “Good luck, my son,” she calls after me. “I know that you will do well.”

  I think that she does not notice that I have neglected to take anything along with me for bait. If I was really going to try to catch a catfish, I would be taking along some pieces of cheese or scraps of meat for my hook.

  Perhaps she also did not notice me pause for the briefest moment before going down the steps from the porch.

  That pause was to pick up the sheathed knife that my father loaned to me from where I had hidden it just beneath the outside windowsill.

  CHAPTER 11

  An Uncertain Fish

  I’ve been here by the stream long enough for the sun to pass well into the midafternoon sky. My cane pole is next to me, but the line—which has nothing but a bare hook at its end—is still wound around the pole. I’ve been doing something other than fishing.

  And now I am thinking that, even without bait, I probably would have had better luck with my fishing pole.

  Despite everything that has happened, I still long to learn things from my father. He knows so much. I want him to teach me some of those many things he knows. The useful things, that is. Not more about those markings which just cause trouble. I can’t believe I was caught absentmindedly making such marks in the earth. They make no sense at all, yet I keep remembering them—like bad dreams that keep coming back. I need to get them out of my mind and concentrate on other things. That is why I have been hacking at this part of a dry pine branch with the knife my father loaned me.

  I put his knife down on top of the flat stone behind me. I hold up the piece of wood in my left hand. I meant it to be a catfish. But no catfish ever looked like this. I doubt that anyone could tell which end is the head and which the tail. I sigh, hold it out at arm’s length, and drop it into the stream.

  Instead of being carried away, it stays there in front of me. It circles around and around in an eddy. It bobs up and down, up and down, as if it is as confused as I am about which way to go. It is not like the long stick that I see farther out in the fast water, being carried by the current. Straight as an arrow, that big stick is allowing itself to be taken downstream.

  Perhaps it will float all the way to the Mississippi. Maybe it will trace the long route my father and others of our people followed by flatboat to head west. They went all that way out to what they hoped would be a new home far away enough from the Aniyonega to be allowed to live their lives undisturbed. What is it like out there? Aside from my father, I do not know anyone who has resettled there. Only a few of our Tsalagi people have gone out to Arkansas. Despite the hardships here, with the white men pushing in from all sides, most of us are still here in what little is left of our eastern homelands.

  But can we stay here?

  It makes my head hurt to think about that. There is so much pressure being put on those of us who remain here along the Little Tennessee. So little of the land that cared for us is left. What the white men now call their states of Kentucky and Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia was once the motherland that gave us life. But every few years more has been taken as the white men have convinced—or forced—our leaders to sign their names to the papers that tear us from our land. That is why the council has agreed that from here on in any Tsalagi who signs away land without the agreement of our whole nation will be sentenced to death.

  But will that stop people from doing that, from accepting gif
ts or believing deceitful words? And will it just all end up with not only our land gone, but also our people fighting and killing one another?

  Better not to dwell on that. I need to turn my mind to what I can do. Think about making things—even if I am not doing so well at that right now.

  I look at the other pieces of pine next to me—the other awful attempts at carvings I’ve made this afternoon. The sun has moved the width of three hands across the sky while I’ve been trying to carve and all I have for my efforts are these hacked pieces of pine. Oh, and I also have this cut across my left palm where the knife slipped. It is not that deep. It stopped bleeding as soon as I picked a plantain leaf, stuck it over the cut, and squeezed it in my hand for a while. But it is a reminder of how inept I am at everything I try to do.

  It was generous of my father to let me use his knife. But, then again, he is not using it. He is not doing anything other than drawing those strange shapes. Those shapes that keep coming back to my mind.

  Why do nothing but troubling thoughts keep swarming around my head like gnats? I take a stick and start to draw those signs in the clay.

  No! Stop that! I toss the stick aside.

  I turn my attention back to my awkward carving of a fish. It’s still stuck in that eddy, circling around. What is that English word I heard the missionary say a few days ago?

  “Uncertain.” That’s it. That’s what my carving is. That’s what I am, too. I am uncertain now about whether or not I will ever learn anything from my father.

  I reach out and push my uncertain fish into the main current. It shoots downstream. But it is still not looking like a fish. More like an overturned canoe belonging to one of the Little People.

  It floats beneath a branch where a kingfisher is perching. The bird cocks its blue and white crested head to study it. But not for long.

  Pathetic. Nothing like any real fish living or dead.

  The kingfisher hops off the branch and flies off across the river. Its rattling call drifts back to me. It sounds as if the bird is mocking me.

  Maybe I should just jump in the river and let it carry me back toward the east along with that horrible carving I just threw away.

  The call of a kingfisher sounds again. But this time it is from right behind me. I turn my head so quickly to look that I almost fall over.

  My father is standing there. Despite his limp, despite the fact that my ears are keener than most, he came up so silently that I did not hear a single footfall. His kingfisher call was so perfect that it would have fooled the bird itself. Name any sound in nature. My father can mimic it perfectly. I suddenly remember that from my childhood. It is one of my happiest memories from back then.

  Sequoyah smiles down at me.

  He raises one eyebrow, nods his head.

  Shall I sit beside you?

  I move over a little.

  He leans down, placing both palms on the ground. Then, in one motion, he shifts his weight to his right arm, lifts his left arm, and swings his stiff leg forward so that he ends up sitting right next to me.

  He reaches across me with his left hand to pick up one of the pieces of pine I was trying to carve into a fish.

  “A good start,” he says.

  “It is nothing,” I say. “The only thing it looks like is a piece of firewood.”

  My father shakes his head.

  “Everything is something. Just as everything has a voice. Everything talks. You just have to listen.”

  He holds the piece of wood up near his ear as if it is speaking to him. He purses his lips and nods. The look on his face is so funny that it makes me laugh despite myself.

  “So what is it saying?” I ask.

  My father lowers the piece of wood from his ear and looks at it. It seems as if he is not looking at it, but into it. Then he reaches back and picks up his knife from the flat stone.

  He makes one cut, then another. The blade moves easily along the grain, shaving off little curls. The wood doesn’t resist as it did when I tried to shape it. It almost seems to be helping him, giving itself to him as a shape emerges.

  He pauses, studies it, turns it, weighs it in his hand. Then he begins working again, pushing the blade away with his thumb, pulling it back toward him with his strong index finger.

  “Here.”

  I take it from his hand. It’s no longer just a rough-cut piece of pine. It’s a terrapin. It looks so real that it seems ready to crawl down the bank into the water and swim away.

  “How did you make this?” I ask.

  “I didn’t,” my father says. “I just let it become what its spirit wanted it to be.”

  He holds up the knife. “See how I hold this?” he says. “Don’t just wrap your fist around it as if it is an ax.”

  “You were watching me?”

  “For a little while. Now look. Hold it this way. It will feel right.”

  I take the knife from him, adjust it in my hand. And I immediately do feel the correctness of it. It’s better balanced. It no longer feels awkward to me. I watched how he moved his hand as he used the knife. I think I can copy what he did.

  I feel as if a bird is fluttering in my chest. My father has finally taught me something.

  I pick up another of the pieces of wood I’d hacked at before. I place the blade of the knife against it.

  “Turn it the other way for the first cut.”

  I do so and a curl of wood slides off as I press the blade forward.

  “Feel the grain of the pine,” my father says. “Let it guide you.”

  “Ah.” It’s just as he says. I can feel the wood cooperating with me as I cut into it. I can already almost see the shape inside it. Another terrapin? No, a rabbit. I start to dig the blade in, eager to draw that animal out, but the blade drives in too deeply and sticks.

  My father touches my wrist.

  “Slowly,” he says. “Speed doesn’t always win. You know the story of Terrapin and Fox?”

  I do, but I want to hear it from his lips.

  “Can you tell it to me?”

  My father leans back and removes his pipe from the pouch at his waist. He slowly fills it with tobacco, packing it into the bowl with his thumb. I keep carving as he does so, slowly, just as he said.

  He pulls out flint and steel, strikes a spark into the pipe and inhales. The tobacco catches fire and glows as red as sunrise. Smoke comes out of the edges of his mouth.

  “Ahhh,” he says. “It happened this way, so the old people say.”

  “Fox was boasting. He was the fastest. No one could beat him in a race.

  “‘I bet that I can beat you,’ Terrapin said.

  “Fox laughed at that.

  “Terrapin said it again. ‘I bet I can beat you. Let us race through the tall grass to the top of each of the seven hills. Whenever one of us reaches the top he will stand up and shout “HUT HUT.”’”

  “‘Let us race, then,’ Fox said. ‘And when I win I will jump up and down on you until your shell breaks.’

  “‘We will race tomorrow,’ Terrapin said. ‘I will tie a white corn shuck on my head so you can see me.’

  “The next day came. They started to race. Fox went running through the tall grass. He was sure he left Terrapin. But ahead of him, on top of the first hill, he saw Terrapin standing. It was easy to see him. He was wearing a white corn shuck on his head.

  “‘HUT HUT,’ Terrapin shouted, and then disappeared in the tall grass.

  “Fox ran faster then. But before he reached the top of the second hill, he heard ‘HUT HUT.’ He saw Terrapin up there with the white corn shuck on his head.

  “Fox ran even faster. But before Fox reached the top of the next hill, Terrapin was already there, standing up and shouting, ‘HUT HUT.’

  “And so it went, hill after hill.

  “When Fox got to the top of the seven
th hill he was all worn out from running so hard. Terrapin was already there waiting for him.

  “‘I have won,’ Terrapin said.

  “Fox looked close at Terrapin. ‘Your eyes are all red,’ Fox said. ‘They were not red when we started the race.’

  “‘My eyes are red from all the wind and dust that got in them when I ran so fast.’

  “So Fox accepted that he had lost the bet. He limped back home.

  “Terrapin waited until Fox was long gone. Then he stood up and shouted, ‘HUT HUT!’

  “And on top of every one of the other six hills another terrapin stood up and shouted back, ‘HUT HUT.’ They all wore white corn shucks on their heads and they all looked alike.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Marks in the Clay

  When he finishes his story, my father laces his fingers together, puts them behind his head, leans back on the moss of the stream bank and looks up at the sky. I lean back next to him, putting my hands behind my head like him. I look up at the sky, seeing a cloud that has a shape much like that of the terrapin in his story. Like all of the stories my father tells, that tale is such a good one. As I think about it, I believe that I understand its lesson. No matter how swift or strong someone may be, it’s better to plan ahead and use your wits.

  When did I first hear that story from him? I’m not sure. Some of my memories of that time when I was very young are confused and have been buried in my mind because they were not ones I wanted to remember. They are from that time I’ve already mentioned when my father drank so much. When they called him Drunken Sequoyah and our house was often filled with Tsalagi men caught in the grasp of whiskey.

  What I do remember is that his stories stopped at the same time when he decided to become sober. Instead of sitting around and telling stories, he threw himself into his work of silversmithing. I missed the stories, but I did not miss the smell of whiskey on his breath.