The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  “We tell the children it is a castle and they are fortunate to have the adventure of it,” said the father of the two girls we had seen at the river. In another life, he’d owned a car sales business in Greenville. Their clothing makes it evident that they have seen finer days and were once quite well-to-do. When the bank failed, they lost everything. “I wanted to lay my head down somewhere and never wake up,” he admitted, and his confession brought thoughts of my Richard, of the fate he chose for himself that day on the ferry when he could not face that the stock market crash had taken everything.

  I was, at that moment, so very angry with him again, almost as if the wound were still fresh. Here before me was a man who had brought his family to the mountains where he had once vacationed in fishing and hunting camps. Here was a husband who had not abandoned his wife and children, but fought for them. They had come here by hoboing the train as far as they could before the railroad bulls caught them and threw them off. After that, they hiked for days through the mountains. They were the first to take up housekeeping in these caves and build a door. The others have joined as time went on, but Mr. Ross is the clear leader of the community. He keeps the peace and decrees whether or not newcomers will be allowed to stay.

  He is quite a learned man, and he travels the mountains by mule from time to time to trade for supplies or medicines, as needed. It was he who told me of a small settlement of Melungeons some forty miles from here, around the mountain and across another valley. Though it will take us off our tour route, Thomas and I have made plans to travel there tomorrow, to record the stories of the Melungeon people and to see if Able might have family among them. If no kin can be found, we hope they can give us the exact location of the Melungeon orphans’ school.

  I have also learned a bit more about the Melungeons, courtesy of Mr. Ross. A well-read mind does not cease its hunger because physical circumstances change. Mr. Ross has devoted his time here to documenting the native plants and how they are used medicinally and as foodstuffs. As a result of his dealings with the Melungeons over this matter, he has studied their history and believes that the bloodcurdling rumors of their communication with spirits and practice of witchcraft are unfortunate falsehoods, partly perpetrated by those desiring to claim the Melungeons’ land and partly caused by the innate reclusiveness of Melungeon families.

  “Can you blame them?” he asked as we sat talking. “From the time they were first discovered in these mountains, the Melungeons have been treated terribly. They’ve been pushed from their lands and farms, labeled as Free Persons of Color, and stripped of their rights. Prior to the War between the States, they were subject to being kidnapped and pressed into slavery. It’s certainly no wonder they’ve kept to themselves.”

  He shared with me the stories he had heard from several families whose ancestors had once hosted Miss Will Allen Dromgoole, a journalist who came to the mountain country and penned several newspaper articles about the “Lost Tribe of Blue-Eyed Indians” in 1891. The content of Miss Dromgoole’s articles on Melungeons was considered to be quite derogatory to the very people who had welcomed her into their homes. To be fair to Miss Dromgoole, perhaps this was a product of the time in which she lived and wrote.

  Mr. Ross has warned me that many among the Melungeon families have not forgotten Miss Dromgoole’s work. They are still smarting over it, now forty-odd years later, and I might have my work cut out for me in winning their trust. My letter of introduction from the Federal Writers’ Project will do no good with them, he assured me, and suggested that I invoke his name instead. He has shown me a small, strangely carved bone pendant roughly the size of a silver dollar. The piece bears an etching on the front and opens via a small brass pin, revealing a tiny compartment.

  Mr. Ross claims that the pendant came from the Melungeons, and that, indeed, several of their women possess similar items, which they wear tied on strings around their necks. These are considered sacred. They are passed down from generation to generation, following the line of eldest daughters. The items are used in prayer, and often the owners will place scraps of paper inside, bearing written needs, pictures, or small pieces of Scripture.

  Whereas last night found me sleepless with worry and fearful of the Klansman, this evening I lie settled into a cozy log-and-rope bed vacated by the Ross children. I am filled with anticipation as I write to you by kerosene light! My thumb rubs back and forth across the smoothly worn surface of Mr. Ross’s bone locket, and I am once again overtaken by the conviction that, above all else, I was meant to gather the stories of the hidden people. Had I not come here, had my life remained in all the familiar rhythms, I would never have found this calling that gives me new purpose.

  How sad, I think now, to live an entire life blinded by the ordinary, when the path to the extraordinary waits just beyond the well-meaning prisons of our own making.

  It is no accident that the small pendant, shaped much like a watch case but carved from polished bone, feels so very holy as I hold it in my hand. It bears on its front the etching of a Maltese cross.

  I know it is true that God has brought me to these mountains.

  All my love,

  Alice

  “This … is amazing.” I turned over the last sheet of Alice’s letter and set it on the card table.

  Clyde slid his bifocals down. “Must’ve been somethin’ else, seeing all the people livin’ in cave houses. Young folks don’t understand how it was back then, but of course, I grew up with people who’d lived through the Depression. My mama and daddy saved ever’thing from bread wrappers to chicken livers. I didn’t know there was such a thing as clothes or toys that hadn’t been somebody else’s first. Folks didn’t just run out and buy, buy, buy. They knew to save for a rainy day. Now if people have a little trouble, they go crawlin’ to the insurance company or some government program, or they file for the welfare. Back in Depression times, you had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Daddy used to tell us how ever’body was broke. Was no place to get a job when he was a boy. Even the military got cut back to bones after the First World War. My daddy’s folks were farmers in the Blue Ridge, and that’s how they survived. Daddy used to say he didn’t know what a real dollar looked like ’til he went into the service durin’ World War II.”

  Listening to Clyde, I was reminded of how much of my own family history had been lost, especially on my father’s side. “The story about the cave houses is fascinating. But this necklace she’s talking about, the ones Alice says the Melungeons wore … I found something similar downstairs. I wonder if she might’ve sent it here to my grandmother? Maybe Mr. Ross gave it to her to keep?”

  But why would Ziltha have saved the necklace, while throwing away all the letters? If she had broken ties with her sister, why hide the necklace and Alice’s original letter in the desk? Or had Lucianne done that? Had she hoped that one day I would find these things and search out the rest of Alice’s story?

  Clyde worked his lips like he was chewing cud. “Maybe she thought it was worth somethin’.” He returned to his task. “I get the rest of these letters together, they might answer the question for us. Near as I can guess, we got less than ten more.”

  “Only ten?”

  “That’s the most there is, and some are pretty fouled up with water stains and pieces gone. I don’t think we’ll be gettin’ the whole story, but maybe we can find some of it. Might be we can figure out the rest another way.”

  “The museum …” I was thinking about the card Tandi Chastain had given me. She’d been so interested in the bone necklace… .

  “What’zat?”

  “I need to go check something on my computer.” If fakes of those necklaces were so popular, surely I could google around a bit and find out why. What was I missing here? Tandi had mentioned a research project having to do with the Lost Colony. What potential connection could there be between that and Alice Lorring’s travels in the Blue Ridge Mountains almost eighty years ago?

  Real-world problems battled wi
th that question. I’d once again burned up the day, researching Alice. In reality, it didn’t matter where the necklace had come from or what Alice’s story was, aside from whatever way that affected the price. My getting emotionally involved wouldn’t help.

  But I already was emotionally involved, and I knew it. I felt the ties to Alice, and the more I learned about her, the more they deepened.

  “It’s about time for some supper.” Clyde’s complaint followed me down the hall. “Can’t expect a man to work on an empty stomach!”

  Ruby caught up to me as I turned the corner into the bedroom, her expression apologetically saying, If somebody doesn’t take me to the park soon, we’re gonna have troub-ble.

  “Ruby … now?” My laptop was right there … within reach.

  A whimper, a hangdog look, a cowering body. Ruby’s answer was easy to read.

  “Okay … okay, I’m sorry.” I patted her head. Tucking the cell phone and some money into my pocket, I grabbed the dollar-store leash, hooked it on Ruby’s dollar-store collar, and slipped into my tennis shoes. The dog panted and lunged, dragging me down the hall, nearly choking herself as we moved through the living room. “We have to make a park run. I’ll grab some supper at the Full Moon while I’m out.”

  “I’ll be here.” Clyde was fully engrossed in a letter. “Go on, git. Stop watchin’ me work a’ready.” He didn’t even look up as Ruby and I hurried off.

  On the street, Mark was just closing up his shop. Ruby skimmed past him in a rush, wrapping his legs in the leash, so that Mark and I almost experienced a 101 Dalmatians moment. He side-straddled the dog in one quick leap.

  “You two are dangerous.” A wink gave the words a double meaning.

  A strange, glittery feeling fluttered through me. “I think she’s a little desperate to get to the park. She’s been cooped up all afternoon.”

  Nodding, he assessed the roiling clouds over Creef Park. “Been that kind of a day. Looks like it’s moving on now, though.”

  “Guess it didn’t cooperate with your plans to go to the water.” The murky weather offered a convenient excuse for the fact that I hadn’t been in touch about taking Rip to the beach. It was probably a good thing the storm had come through. You do not need to get involved here, the voice of reason was telling me, but at the same time, Mark was smiling that smile, and I felt it in the pit of my stomach. I’d never experienced anything quite like that before, and living the resort life, I’d crossed paths with some hunky men.

  I was vaguely aware of Ruby tugging her way around the corner of the building, but it was a moment before I realized she’d just befouled the Rip Shack’s flower bed. “Sorry.” I winced.

  Mark’s soft laugh was warm and familiar—the kind of chuckle that’s traded between friends who make allowances for one another. “Don’t worry about it. She’s not the first dog to get that idea.”

  “Rip would never …”

  “He’s probably the reason she did that.”

  The mention of Rip brought to mind the revelation about the dog’s original owner … Mark’s daughter. I remembered the sensation of standing with him this morning, the connection I’d felt, the sharing of things that were honest and raw. It was so unlike me. I usually kept my junk to myself and didn’t invite other people to reveal theirs. Things were easier that way. Less complicated.

  Mark was a risk in so many ways.

  “How’s Joel?”

  “Better. His girlfriend, Kayla, came to stay with him at the house. She’s a good kid. Has her life together. Twenty-three and out of college, working, so she’s older and wiser. She’s pretty stuck on Joel, but she wants him to clean up his act. To grow up. She’s convinced she can change him.”

  “What do you think?” It was a deeper question, one that went far beyond Joel and his decisions about life.

  Mark took a moment to consider his answer. “I don’t think people change unless they want to. I told him if he’d get his stuff from his uncle’s house, he could come stay with me awhile, as long as he keeps clean, stays out of trouble, and shows up for work. The guys he was with at the party last night rolled somebody’s Jeep. That’s where Joel got the scratches. Apparently they all walked away, but the vehicle is totaled. Some vacationing college student has an unhappy phone call to make to Mommy and Daddy, I guess.”

  I thought of Joel, of all that potential hanging on the thin thread of a nineteen-year-old’s decisions. Someone like Mark could make the difference. “I hope Joel takes you up on it.”

  “Me too.”

  Overhead, the Excelsior moaned in the wind, as if it were adding to the conversation, pointing out that it, too, could have a purpose. This place could change the future for kids like Joel. Depending on the value of the bone locket and the other things I’d left at the museum, so many options might open up. If replicas of the lockets were sold around here, Mark might know about them.

  “Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Are you in a hurry right now? Can you hang on a minute while I take Ruby across the street?”

  “I’ll walk over with you.” He started off without waiting for agreement.

  I fell into step with him, Ruby lurching ahead, tugging me like a tetherball as I tried to relate the story of the letters and the necklace and what I’d learned at the museum. “The director there said she was afraid the necklace was fake because there are so many reproductions around now, that they’re a tourist item. I was about to do a little googling about it, but Ruby decided it was time to make a trip to the park.”

  Mark mulled a moment. “Sounds like you might be talking about the story keeper necklaces.”

  “The what?”

  “The story keeper necklaces. Your museum director is right—there’s a flood of them being produced in China and India. Stores and gas stops from here to Nashville carry them. Once the movie comes out, I’m sure they’ll be hanging in novelty shops everywhere.”

  “What movie?”

  He blinked, blinked again, looked at me as if my head had suddenly popped off my body and danced a jig. “Where have you been for the past year? Under a rock?”

  “Sort of.” Usually after a day in the restaurant, I came home exhausted, and the last thing I wanted to do was turn on the TV and take in the news. There were times when it was all I could do to get out of bed, make the drive into work, and face the staff and the customers … and Denise. Failure is a miserable feeling, especially after you’ve tried so hard.

  There were other times when I told myself I needed to quit being such a wimp. Today was one of those. Compared to what Mark had been through, my business problems were minuscule. I hadn’t lost anything that hard work couldn’t replace. Mark’s daughter was gone. He wouldn’t see her grow up, graduate from high school, go to college. He’d never walk her down the aisle… .

  The dose of perspective hit me hard. I’d made the restaurant business life or death.

  It wasn’t.

  Mark was eyeballing me. “Time Shifters? Evan Hall? The writer? You work around young people. That must ring a bell.”

  Snapping my fingers, I pointed at him. “I do know that one.” Thank you, hot-line cooks and lovesick waitresses. For years, I’d been listening to twentysomethings prattle on about their latest entertainment obsessions. “So the necklace I found in the Excelsior is somehow related to … a book?” Perplexed didn’t even begin to describe me right now.

  Mark chuckled. “You really are out of the mainstream. His last book, The Story Keeper, stirred up a huge hoopla, especially around here because there were some ties to the Lost Colony. I’m sure that’s why the museum down on Hatteras has such an interest. Supposedly parts of the book came from a true story—an old one. There are people who dispute whether that’s fact or fiction, but all the press makes for good business. No doubt that’s what the museum is thinking.”

  Ruby tugged on her leash, and I let her go. She never wandered far when we were outside; she was too afraid of being left behind. “Okay … so, clue me in a bit about this
whole thing. I’m not all that up on pop culture. I just learned what YOLO meant, like, a month ago. I thought the kids at work were saying yo-yo. My cousin’s six-year-old daughter had to finally explain that it meant ‘you only live once.’”

  A playful tsk-tsk answered. “All work and no play …”

  “Sad, I know. Long story, but it’s been a complicated year. We’re fighting a legal battle over our second restaurant. The other side is as crooked as wet linguine and just about as slimy. But they’re not going to win.”

  Thick lashes hooded his thoughts. Something passed by—something deeper than chatter about books. Was he registering the fact that I had reasons to sell the Excelsior—reasons that couldn’t be ignored? “All right. Here’s the quick version: When the book came out last year, the press nugget was that it was based on a turn-of-the-century journal and an old manuscript that had been written about the journal. Both were supposedly rediscovered recently. One of the carved bone necklaces was found with them. The author of the manuscript claimed that the necklaces originated with people who were marooned here on the coast long before other Europeans came—before the Pilgrims and so forth. If that’s really true, those people could have been Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colonists. That might challenge some of the theories about how they vanished from Roanoke and where they went.”

  “Okay … I see.” Now the conversations at Benoit House made more sense, and so did Tandi Chastain’s intense fascination with the scrimshaw piece and the necklace.

  “You can imagine what a hot debate the subject is.”

  “Wow.” Without even realizing it, the Excelsior and I had stepped into a local news hotbed. Somewhere in there, Alice’s letters niggled too. What had she learned about the necklaces and the Melungeon women who wore them? “So, do you think it’s real—this whole story keeper thing, I mean?” Mark seemed like a practical man, not the kind to succumb to wild theories or Hollywood hype. He was a lawyer, after all. Lawyers dealt in facts. Things they could prove.