The Blessed Blend

by Allison Shaw

  Papa’s great-grandfather had come over from Scotland and married Sadie Lossiah, a full-blood Cherokee. Their son Lucas had married Mary Stockett, who was half-blood Meherrin on her mother’s side and three-eighths-blood Creek on her father’s side. Papa’s father, Peter, had married Elizabeth Conley, who was one-eighth-blood Cherokee, one-eighth-blood Lumbee, and quarter-blood Chikahominy/Saponi on her father’s side and Welsh/Scotch-Irish on her mother’s. Papa was their third child and oldest son. He was married to Jolena Mullins, who was from one of the few full-blood Melungeon families. Their fourth child, Darlene, was Callie’s mother.

  Callie’s father, David Hawken, had stayed around long enough to give Callie his name before getting sent to prison for shooting a sheriff’s deputy trying to serve a warrant on him for suspected felony theft and narcotics charges. He had been mostly of Scotch-Irish and English descent, a handsome man with golden blond hair and piercing blue eyes.

  Callie was lighter than her mother, who had hair blacker than a crow’s wing, dark brown eyes, and a dark-olive tone to her complexion, but darker than her fair-skinned father. She had no memories of him and only knew what he looked like from a few pictures her mother had.

  When Callie was three, Darlene had married Jim Awiakta, a half-blood Cherokee from Maryville. He had loved Callie as his own and raised her up Cherokee despite the fact that she couldn’t be enrolled in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians like her half-siblings Caleb, Layla, and Eli. EBCI required a blood-quantum of one-sixteenth and at least one parent who was an enrolled tribal member. Callie was seven-thirty-seconds total degree of Indian blood, a little less than a quarter, but was less than one sixteenth Cherokee and her great-great-great grandmother had been the last enrolled member in the family.

  That didn’t bother her in the least. She had been raised Cherokee and that was that, card or no card. When Jim had first taken his new family to see his folks on the reservation, her step-cousins had called her a white girl and told her she didn’t belong there. Callie had met their challenges with her fists and settled any argument as to whether she was Indian enough to be part of the family with occasional refresher courses up until she was about seventeen. She would stand there disheveled and defiant from a fight as Jim gave her a hug and a smile and said, “That’s my girl, Callie. Don’t you ever let anyone push you around!”

  And she hadn’t. Not her cousins on the rez. Not the local white kids. Not people who wielded wealth or power. When life tried to push her around or knock her flat, she met it standing on her feet, staring it straight in the face, and fighting like hell. The battle might leave her bruised and bleeding sometimes, but never beaten.

  Her heart was a different story. Euan Wallace had broken it into so many pieces that it might never heal and even if it did, she wasn’t ever going to let any man hurt her like that again. She had been played for a fool by a man who had been too selfish to see love as anything more than a game. It had been no game to her. She had been taught that love was a way of life, something sacred and wonderful to be shared and nourished. A heart given was a treasure to be cherished and protected.

  She had given Euan her heart and he had treated it like garbage.

  Well, she had survived. She had come home to her kin and her beloved mountains, given birth to two beautiful children, and was making a life for her family. Euan Wallace could go to hell in a hand basket with the high horse he had ridden in on shoved right up where the sun doesn’t shine.

  The shrieking laughter of her children and their cousins caught her attention. Turning to look, she saw her daughter, Mountain Rose, riding on Fugly, her heels dug into the huge billy goat’s sides and her small hands gripping his sweeping handle-bar horns. Fugly was trotting along with his tongue out of his mouth and his tail wagging. Three feet tall at the shoulder and grizzled gray, black, and brown in color, the goat was truly as eff’n ugly as her brother Caleb had said when he’d named him.

  Mountain Rose had a smile as wide as a valley on her round face and was giggling up a storm. Her twin, Red Wolf, ran alongside tugging at his sister’s shirt in an effort to unseat her. Three of their cousins, Cody Stockett, age five, his brother Joshua and their cousin Lizzie Collins, both aged four, were in on the game. Four of the family cur dogs were likewise part of the chase, barking their fool heads off.

  Just about the time Callie yelled, “Mountain Rose Hawken, get off that goat!” Cody grabbed the girl’s arm and gave it a hard yank. Mountain Rose slid off Fugly, landed on the ground with a thud, and then proceeded to jump up and pummel her older cousin with her small fists. Cody had Fugly by one horn and was trying to wrestle with him. The rest of the kids decided to wrestle with Cody and they all fell down in a tangle of arms and legs. One of the dogs managed to get in the way and yelped as Joshua stumbled over him.

  Childhood in the mountains didn’t change much from one generation to the next.

  Papa Robertson came out of his workshop, his overalls stained with grease from working on the tiller. His hair, once black, was iron gray, but his rangy body was as strong as men half his seventy-eight years. He eyed his great-grandchildren at play with a smile and chuckled to himself as Mountain Rose landed a solid punch on Joshua. Darned if that girl wasn’t just like her mother, and God help the boys when she got older.

  Chick gave him a semi-disgusted look as he said to the mare, “’Bout time ye earned a bit of yer keep there, hoss.”

  She laid her ears back and Papa considered that she suited her mistress to a tee. Both of them were stubborn, opinionated, and quite blunt about their likes and dislikes. And not above inflicting some discomfort on anyone who aroused their displeasure.

  Chick was one of the few horses he knew of that could kick sideways and he had seen her nail dogs without breaking stride. Once, she had kicked out the headlights on a car belonging to the coal company’s agent when the arrogant idiot had honked at the mare to get out of his way as he came up the long narrow track from the main road.

  His great-grandfather had made sure to secure the water, mineral, and mining rights to his land when he had purchased it and had taught all of his children and kinfolk to make sure that the rights were passed down along with the land. The result was that unlike a lot of other folks in Appalachia, the coal company couldn’t kick them off their land to take the coal and then leave them with a ruined landscape of leveled mountains and valleys filled in with sterile or even toxic debris. They owned their land and everything under it.

  But to keep it they had to make more of a living than just farming it. His son-in-law Jim Awiakta had come up with the idea to create a privately-owned hunting reserve catering primarily to the wealthy. Reintroduced elk, bison, and mountain lion supplemented the already abundant whitetail deer, turkey, quail, pheasant, and bear. There were also hogzillas, the monstrously huge offspring of Russian wild boar and feral domestic pigs.

  Jim had secured grants through his tribe and worked with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to get the elk and most of the bison. Some of the bison had been surreptitiously relocated from the herd at Yellowstone with the help of several individuals trying to keep the Montana Department of Livestock from hazing and shooting them as they tried to migrate to ancient calving grounds and spring pasture.

  Same with the mountain lions, relocated from out west. There was a small pack of rehabilitated wolves but they weren’t to be hunted. Jim was Wolf Clan and these were his relatives.

  Tight rules and limits on which and how many animals could be hunted as well as the challenging terrain made the hunts more interesting, and there were those willing to pay the price. Papa and Jim had formed a coalition of property owners who would allow hunting across their land, provide cabins or campsites, and even act as guides for a fee or percentage of the profits.

  Since not everyone wanted to hunt or fish, Broken Bone Lodge also offered camping, hiking, and horseback tours. There were numerous caves, unique geological and archaeological sites, old-growth forest, and species of plants and ani
mals not found anywhere else which drew in photographers and naturalists. People could learn about medicinal herbs, survival skills, and other mountain ways. This eco-tourism thing was actually making some good money despite the economy and Papa Robertson was proud to have gotten in on it early.

  There was a group coming in today and Callie was going to meet them with a string of horses and pack-mules to ferry them and their gear over the mountain and across the valley to camp deep in Bear Wallow Holler. Her cousins Jonas Goins and Mike Cumbow were already headed there to set up camp.

  “Ye ‘bout done there, gal?” Papa asked Callie.

  Callie was giving Chick’s girth-strap one last hitch. “Yes sir,” she replied. “Just got to get my saddle bags on.”

  She dropped the bags behind the saddle with casual grace and fastened them down. Her gear was already on its way with Jonas and Mike, so the saddle bags were packed with first aid supplies, extra water and trail food, a high-powered walkie-talkie for emergency contact, and ammunition for her firearms. She carried an SKS sniper rifle in a scabbard hung off the right side of the saddle, a .44 pistol under her over-shirt, a wrist-rocket slingshot and plenty of steel shot in a bandolier, and a bow and quiver full of arrows across her back.

  Not to mention four hidden throwing knives and a buck knife in a sheath on her belt. Some men forgot their manners in the woods and tried to treat her as a game animal of another kind. Callie handled their lapses with brutal efficiency. If they were lucky, they wised up before she had to inflict serious injury.

  If not, they found out that the shadows in the woods came to life in some pretty frightening ways before they had finished making their first wrong move.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  Mountain Rose and Red Wolf came running. “Where ya going, Mama?” they asked in unison.

  Callie squatted down and gathered them in her arms. “I’m guiding some folks to camp,” she answered.

  “Can we come?” asked Red Wolf.

  “Can we?” echoed Mountain Rose.

  Their earnest little faces pleaded for her to assent but this was a hunting party she was guiding and the men would have weapons, a situation she deemed unsafe for her children. She looked them over and stroked their hair, so deep a red as to be almost burgundy in color.

  Like Euan’s.

  Red Wolf had his father’s face with its long fine nose and firm chin, his father’s smile and height. His eyes were also like Euan’s, a deep brown that hid his thoughts well away from the world. He had his father’s fair clear skin, although not quite as pale. He had enough of her blood to give his skin a light olivine blush so that he didn’t burn much or freckle in the sun. His lips were a bit fuller like Callie’s and he had also inherited her stick-straight hair texture and high cheekbones.

  Mountain Rose was darker of complexion than her twin, with skin that was like honeyed ivory dusted with wild rose petals, and just a hint of freckling across her nose and cheeks. She had Callie’s blue-gray eyes - a color sometimes referred to as Confederate Blue - and rounded face but had her father’s dimples and wavy hair. She was more outgoing than Red Wolf, laughed more easily, but her temperament was more mercurial than her twin’s. Red Wolf would talk his way through a situation while Mountain Rose would ball up her fist and knock it flat.

  There was nothing in this world that Callie loved more than her children and it pained her to have to spend a few days away from them. “Not this time,” she said. “There’ll be a lot of guns being carried and too many chances for an accident to happen. I can’t risk either of you getting hurt.”

  “But Mama, I wanna go!” said Mountain Rose, with a stomp of her foot. “I wanna ride with you!”

  Red Wolf spoke, his little face very serious. “Won’t the guns hurt you, too, Mama?” Her children had emotional maturity and verbal skills beyond their years, often eerily so. They were already reading and doing basic math and there was no doubt that their intellectual capacities were extremely high.

  Callie smiled, taking his face in her hands. “No, baby,” she said, before slipping into the local dialect. “I’m big enough to handle things. Now, you’uns help Papa and Maw-Maw and Grandma and Grandpa for a few days. Uncle Caleb said he was going to town tomorrow and I said it’s okay if he takes you’uns out for ice cream and a movie. Okay?”

  Mountain Rose brightened up a little. “Will Lacie be there too?” she asked. Lacie was Uncle Caleb’s girlfriend and knew how to fix up hair lots of neat ways. Unlike her mother, Mountain Rose loved to play dress-up and have her hair done up fancy.

  Callie smiled.”Oh, I’m sure she will. Uncle Caleb likes to treat her when he can.”

  “He likes her a lot,” Red Wolf noted. “She gonna be our aunt?”

  “I don’t know, son,” Callie replied. “They’re both still pretty young to get married. Maybe in a few years.”

  “Mama, why aren’t you married?” Mountain Rose asked. “Are you waiting for our daddy?”

  Pain shot through Callie from her heart clean to the marrow of her soul. She suppressed the tears that began to well up in her eyes. Kids weren’t stupid and her two were sharper than most. They knew they had a father even if she hadn’t told them anything about him.

  A thousand invectives scrabbled about inside her waiting for her to vent her sorrow and anger, but she would never hurt her children by saying anything bad about their father. Instead she said, “When you’re a bit older I’ll tell you about him. Right now it’s hard for me to talk about it. Can you wait until I’m ready?”

  The twins nodded solemnly. From the Native, Melungeon, and Gaelic blood they had inherited exceedingly keen empathic abilities. Any mention of their father was something that made their mama very sad no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She tried to hide it because she loved them. And they knew that she still loved their daddy even if she never said so.

  “Can we ride to the lodge?” Mountain Rose asked. “Grandma and Grandpa are there.”

  Callie thought on that for a moment and then assented. “Well, alright, but you have to behave yourselves in front of our guests. No fighting and no nosy questions.”

  “Yes ma’am,” they answered in unison.

  “Go wash up and change your clothes right quick. You’uns smell like goats,” she ordered, slipping back into the local dialect.

  As they scampered off to the cabin in a gaggle with their cousins, Papa observed, “Callie, them two must look an awful lot like their daddy. They’s already askin’ about him. What will ye tell ‘em?”

  She shrugged. “They’ve been asking and I don’t know what to tell them. If I tell them the truth it’ll hurt them to know that their daddy was a no-good jackass. If I try to sugar-coat things, they’ll wonder why we’re not still together. And there’s no point in trying to lie about it.”

  “So what have ye told them?” Papa asked.

  She took in a deep breath and let it out. “That I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

  Papa laid a hand on her shoulder and said gently, “Ye have to let go of it someday, child. Keepin’ a hurt caged up like that just makes it meaner and harder to get rid of.”

  Callie looked up into Papa’s black eyes and drew on the warmth shining out of them. He was the one who had encouraged her to spend a summer in Scotland and learn about that part of her heritage, and when she had come home pregnant he had been the one to defend her decision to remain silent about what had happened. As family patriarch, what he said was pretty much how it went even though he seldom raised his voice to make his mind known.

  Red Wolf and Mountain Rose ran out of the cabin with their great-grandmother calling after them to come back and get their coats and caps. Callie pointed back at her grandmother without saying a word. The children stopped, their brows knitted, and Mountain Rose huffed, “Aw, Mama, do we hafta? It’s not cold at all!”

  “Young lady, go get your coat and hat or stay here. Your choice,” Callie said firmly.

  Both children turned and went back to the ca
bin. Jolena put their coats on and fussed at them a little bit for thinking they could just run off like that. “Yore mama spoils ye little heathens too much!” she fussed. “Ain’t no reason fer you’uns to ride down the mountain with her ‘ceptin’ ye be lookin’ fer more trouble to get into!”

  Red Wolf replied, “Mama’s gonna be gone a few days. We don’t like it when she goes like that.”

  Jolena sighed and said, “Me, neither, child. But it’s our livin’ an’ yore mama has to work like the rest of us.” She smiled and kissed both children on the forehead. “Now you’uns go on!”

  The twins flew to their mother and Callie hugged them tightly and then turned to her grandfather. Papa put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

  “You be careful, Callie,” he warned gently. “Rich or not, strangers are still strangers.”

  Callie nodded as she put her hat on. “I will, Papa. Besides, I have my security detail to handle anything I can’t,” she said as she mounted up. Papa handed the children up to Callie. Mountain Rose went on her lap and Red Wolf was placed behind the cantle, his legs hanging off the saddle bags and his arms about his mother’s waist.

  She clucked to Chick and drew the reins across the mare’s neck to back and turn her. As she tapped her heels to the mare’s sides she whistled sharply. Four large gray shadows emerged from the woods. The wolf-hybrids had been raised in captivity by people who thought that owning a wolf was a cool thing to do and then abandoned when those same people realized that they couldn’t handle these animals. Dumped in the mountains with no training in the ways of the pack and no survival skills, most starved to death or were shot when they attacked livestock.

  Jim had started rehabilitating such wolves with a pair who tried to take a deer he had just killed. Over the last few years, with assistance from his children and a couple of local wildlife officers, he had rescued and retrained enough wolves to form a decent pack. Since most had been neutered, they couldn’t increase their numbers as nature intended, but the addition of a mated pair donated by a breeder offered hope for a truly wild pack in the future.