Lovely In Her Bones

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “I was thinking of that myself,” said Amelanchier. “More tea?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN she’s gone?” Milo demanded. “Did she leave a note?”

  “No. I thought she must have gone down to the creek or something, but I’ve called and she doesn’t answer.”

  “Have you checked the site?” asked Milo. He couldn’t think of any reason for her to go there, but it was the only possibility that occurred to him.

  “No. Shall we go out there now?”

  “In a minute. Comfrey Stecoah is coming along. What happened here that would make Elizabeth leave? What did the deputy want?”

  “He found out I’m a Cherokee, and he wanted to see if he could scare me into a confession. On account of the tomahawk.”

  Milo considered this piece of information. “Was Elizabeth frightened?” he asked finally.

  “If you mean, did she think I was going to scalp her, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, what was she doing?”

  “She spent most of the morning remeasuring those skulls. That, and moping about how nasty you’ve been lately.”

  Milo’s lips tightened. “I have not been nasty! I’ve been professional. Those measurements had to be done correctly, whether it hurt her feelings or not.”

  Jake scowled back. “Yeah? Well, suppose she did them correctly in the first place?”

  “I wish she had,” said Milo softly.

  “Maybe she did,” said Dummyweed brightly. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he felt that as representative of the law, it was time to say something, and that seemed appropriate.

  It seemed to make sense to Jake. “Yeah,” he said evenly. “Maybe she did.”

  Milo, who had never considered that possibility, was shaken. “What do you mean?”

  “I sat here and watched her do those figures again for a couple of hours, man,” Jake informed him. “And she was getting the exact same answers she got the first time.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Why?” asked Dummyweed, interested.

  They ignored him.

  “The numbers don’t fit the chart,” said Milo, as if that settled it.

  “Okay,” nodded Jake. “Assume for a moment that Elizabeth’s figures are right. That leaves two choices. One: that Alex faked or screwed up ten years of research on Plains Indians, or two…”

  “That the Cullowhees are not Indians,” said Milo faintly.

  “Take your pick,” shrugged Jake.

  “Let me see those skulls!”

  When Comfrey Stecoah found them in the common room some ten minutes later, Milo had measured two of the skulls, and his face looked as much of a death’s-head as any of them. Jake and the deputy were kneeling beside the crate, looking equally grim.

  “Where’s the young lady?” asked Comfrey, looking around.

  “You tell us!” Jake shot back.

  “Elizabeth is missing,” Milo said as calmly as he could. “We’re going to check the site for her. Would you come with us, please?”

  Comfrey shook his head, presumably at the strangeness of the female sex. “What made her take off?” he wondered aloud.

  “I think it was a discovery she made this morning, Mr. Stecoah. According to the tests she did”-he paused for effect-“the Cullowhees are not Indian!”

  “Oh, is that all?” said Comfrey. “Shoot far, I could’a told you that.”

  Milo, to whom live people were always a closed book-of hieroglyphics-thought he had gone mad. Surely he could not have just heard… “What did you say?”

  “I figured it out for myself when I was doing research into the origin stories. That’s how I spotted you, Little Beaver,” he said, nodding at Jake.

  “Don’t call me-”

  “Reckon we belonged to your gang a long time back. But all the other folks around here still believe they’re Indians, and I never told ’em no different.”

  “But why did you call us in to do the study if you already knew?” Milo’s head was spinning.

  “Oh, for the government, son. To make it look good. We filed a formal request for recognition with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we had to send a list of things we were doing to substantiate our claim. Old maps, birth certificates showing residence in this county. I figured a scientific study would look real official.”

  “But it would disprove your case,” said Milo patiently.

  “Oh, shoot, that didn’t worry me! You don’t understand the government. I know you fellows always tack words like ‘probably’ and ‘generally’ into your reports. You never say anything flat out simple. Most folks don’t read all those technical reports nohow, and them that do may not believe ’em. The report would look good in our case file, though.”

  “But we’ll have to say that you aren’t Indian, and they won’t give you the land.” Another thought struck him. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Well, judging from what I found out, I’d say we were escaped slaves from the Cherokee nation. We got a family of Rosses up on the ridge; that’s a Cherokee last name.”

  “So’s Stecoah,” murmured Jake.

  “Is that possible?” asked Milo, turning to Jake.

  “Sure. The Cherokees were the biggest slaveholders of any of the five nations. Bought ’em from the settlers.”

  “Didn’t marry any, though,” said Comfrey.

  “Usually not,” Jake admitted.

  Milo shook his head incredulously. “So you’re a mixture of blacks and Anglo-Saxons. No wonder you didn’t fit the chart! And all this was for nothing, because you won’t get the land.”

  Comfrey smiled easily. “Oh, I think we will. Don’t you, Little Beaver?”

  Jake scowled. “Probably.”

  “How can they give you a reservation when you’re not Indians?” asked Milo.

  “I expect the other tribes will insist on letting us in,” Comfrey told him. “Otherwise, it might be bad for them in the long run.”

  “This makes absolutely no sense!”

  “Yes, it does,” Jake assured him.

  “It’s politics,” explained the leader of the Cullowhees. “You see, if they kept us from getting tribal recognition, what would their grounds be?”

  “That you aren’t Indian.”

  “Racial impurity,” Comfrey corrected him. “That we are not pure-bred. But we do have a group identity, and we do claim to be Indian, and have claimed it for years.”

  “So?”

  “So if we get disqualified on the grounds of racial impurity, that will make all the other Indian tribes mighty damn nervous.”

  “Why?” asked Milo, fascinated.

  “Because who is pure nowadays? The Navajos are mixed with Hispanics, like most of the rest of the bunch out west-”

  “And the Cherokees started marrying white settlers in 1809,” murmured Jake.

  “I didn’t think Adair sounded very Indian,” Milo admitted.

  “Yep. If they started kicking out impure Indians, they’d have to start worrying about who’d be next. Maybe someday uranium would be discovered on the old reservation, and bingo! Uncle Sam would decide that your tribe wasn’t pure enough to deserve the land. Yep, they wouldn’t like to see that precedent set. Not over one little old valley in the Smokies. We’ve made enough noise about being Indian to where we’d embarrass every tribe in the country if they kicked us out now.”

  “That’s very clever,” said Dummyweed.

  “Just politics,” said Comfrey modestly.

  “Why was Alex killed?” asked Milo quietly. He was sure it was tied in to all this.

  “I don’t know,” said Comfrey. “Unless the strip miners did it, figuring he’d prove we were the real thing.”

  “You didn’t kill him, hoping we would finish the project and come up with the wrong answer?” Milo winced, thinking how close he had come to doing just that.

  “Shoot, I didn’t care. I just wanted the big man’s name on the report, no matter what he had to
say on the subject.”

  “And nobody else knew you weren’t Indian?”

  “Nary a one.”

  “Suppose somebody figured it out, though?” said Milo slowly. “If somebody knew the truth, and didn’t realize the politics involved, they might think it was a secret that had to be protected.”

  “Who would know?” asked Jake.

  “Somebody old, maybe, who would remember the truth from childhood.”

  Comfrey shook his head. “Nope. My mama is the oldest one, and she’s always sworn we come from the Unaka tribe.”

  Jake looked stricken. “Unaka! No wonder Elizabeth looked funny! I was telling her today that it’s the Cherokee word for white man.”

  “And if she heard it from Amelanchier, she’d wonder what was going on. And she might have gone up to ask her! Does your mother know about this political scheme of yours?”

  “No,” stammered Comfrey. “She’s just an old lady now, and I didn’t want to worry her-”

  “I think she already knows,” said Milo grimly. “Let’s go!”

  As they hurried out of the church, Dummyweed pulled at Comfrey’s sleeve. “Mr. Stecoah, since you guys aren’t Indians anyway, do you think I could join the tribe?” He thought it would be very good for the tourist trade.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MILO HAD RUN a hundred yards up the path before he realized that he was staking all his troops on one hunch. Suppose that Elizabeth had not gone to Amelanchier’s cabin? He could not afford to be wrong. He also realized that sending four men to confront a woman in her eighties was an embarrassing form of overkill. He motioned for the others to stop.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Jake, over the sound of Dummyweed’s gasping.

  “I think we should split up, in case she went somewhere else. Why don’t you and Coltsfoot check the site?”

  “Why should she go there?”

  “I don’t know. To look for more evidence around the graves, maybe. Anyway, we ought to check it out.”

  “What about you?” asked Jake, cutting his eyes toward Comfrey.

  “I’ll risk it,” said Milo, catching his meaning. “If you don’t find her, come up to the cabin.”

  As they drew nearer to the mountain clearing, Comfrey caught up with Milo and signaled for him to walk quietly. They went the next hundred yards in silence, easing from one point of cover to the next. Milo noticed that Comfrey had not brought his rifle.

  “Why are we hiding?” he whispered. “Do you think she’d shoot us?”

  Comfrey shrugged. “She’s an old woman. If she’s protecting our people, ain’t none of us safe up here.”

  Milo was shocked. “But you’re her son!” he protested.“Couldn’t you pretend you’re up here on a friendly visit?”

  “I don’t know how well she sees at this distance these days, and I ain’t about to bet my life that she’d recognize me. Especially if she’s already het up over something. I’ll do this my way, if it’s all the same to you.”

  When they reached the sourwood tree at the edge of the clearing, Comfrey stopped, studying the cabin. “You wait here and watch me. If I get to the porch okay, I’ll give you a signal and you get up there as quick as you can.”

  Milo tried again. “She’s a little old lady,” he said, feeling foolish. “Aren’t we overdoing this?”

  Comfrey looked at him with a troubled expression that means that a mountain person is about to say straight out something difficult for him to express. He decided against it, though, grinned and answered: “Boy, you remind me of the fellow who mistook a coral snake for a scarlet king and died a wiser man. Now stay here and keep your head down!”

  As he watched Comfrey creep through the fescue grass, Milo tried to view the whole thing as a scene from a war movie. He knew that if he let his mind dwell on Elizabeth, or on the possibility that they were too late, his reactions would be thrown off, which might undo any chance they had to save her. As if in slow motion, Comfrey passed the woodpile and the dogwood tree, until at last he reached the porch, mounting it not by the front steps, but by a practiced roll around one of the support posts. Milo, who expected to see him ease toward the window, was surprised to see him crawl toward the wooden door instead.

  This guy really is a pro, he thought, when he realized how much safer it was to listen than to look. A moment later Comfrey gave him an okay sign of circled thumb and forefinger, motioning him forward.

  “She’s alive,” thought Milo, darting from cover.

  His next conscious moment was hitting the porch at a running jump while Comfrey kicked open the door to the cabin.

  Milo saw the cramped room, its hand-hewn furniture wedged between cardboard boxes of letters from tourists and piles of packaged herbs. At a plank table in the middle of it all sat Elizabeth, sipping tea from an earthenware mug. When she saw Milo panting in the doorway, she raised her eyebrows, inquiring sweetly: “Return of the ogre?”

  “Are you all right?” Milo blurted out before he realized that she obviously was.

  “Certainly,” Elizabeth informed him. “Amelanchier and I were just talking about… herbs.”

  Milo looked at the old woman, whose initial look of surprise had subsided into wariness. “How do, Comfrey,” she said crisply.

  “We got to talk, Mom,” he muttered.

  “I reckon you should have thought of that some time back,” his mother remarked. “Bit late in the day for it now.”

  Elizabeth set down her mug, sloshing a bit of tea on the table. “By the way, Milo, you were right about the measurements. I did them wrong.”

  Milo glanced uneasily at Amelanchier. He didn’t see a weapon, but anything could be concealed in the clutter of the room. “We’ll talk about that later. You have to leave now.”

  “What’s your hurry?” asked Amelanchier genially. “Stay to tea?”

  “What?” asked Elizabeth. She kept shaking her head as if she were drowsy. “Why do I have to leave now, Bill?”

  Comfrey glanced at her, then back at his mother. “I believe I’ll have a sip of that tea,” he remarked.

  “I’ll fix you a cup, son.”

  Comfrey picked up Elizabeth’s mug. “This’ll do me,” he said, sipping it.

  Milo stiffened. “Is it poison?”

  “The question is, with what?” grunted Comfrey. “I’d say foxglove, offhand.”

  Elizabeth laughed, a faraway sound which seemed to echo back through her ears. “Don’t be silly! Wise Woman’s my friend… why poison me?”

  If there was a reply to this question, Elizabeth did not hear it. She had slumped unconscious to the floor.

  Comfrey Stecoah faced his mother with weary resignation. “Mo-ther!”

  The succeeding hours were much easier on Elizabeth, who slept through them all, than on Milo, who did not. They had wasted precious time explaining the political nuances of the situation to Amelanchier’s satisfaction, so that she would tell them which poison had been placed in Elizabeth’s drink. That being accomplished, she had thrown in at no extra charge her opinion that they had about half an hour to get Elizabeth to a hospital if they reckoned to save her. It had taken thirty-eight minutes to get her there, even with Comfrey taking the winding roads at speeds Milo seldom tried on straightaways. After the breakneck speed of the first thirty-eight minutes, time slowed down for Milo into a malicious compensation of relative motion, in which seconds could be whiled away like afternoons, and minutes were enough time to read innumerable back issues of National Geographic. He waited; filled out forms for the gorgon at the front desk; called Bill; waited; drank seven cups of coffee; waited; talked to Pilot Barnes; waited. At last, someone wearing hospital greens and an expression of authority appeared in the waiting room and said that Elizabeth was sleeping, that her vital signs were stable, that she had come through the treatment as one would expect someone her age to. Milo waited for him to say flatly that she was going to live, but that, it seemed, was not done. “We’ll be able to tell for sure tomorrow,” was the bes
t answer he could get. Milo wouldn’t leave. Jake appeared with a couple of hamburgers, which Milo may or may not have eaten. He didn’t know. He was glad to be able to sit there all night, awake, as if by doing so he was earning her recovery. And, if the worst should happen and she did not recover, at least he would be spared the guilt he had felt over Alex, the feeling of not having tried to make him live. Of course, he knew how silly he would feel about all of it later.

  Two days later, Elizabeth, almost as pale as the pillow propping her up, frowned at the sheet of notebook paper in front of her.

  Dear Bill,

  I am in the hospital now, having been poisoned by a mass murderer. If you can manage to keep this fact from Mom and Dad, I will be grateful.

  I should be out of here in a day or two, and I will come to stay with you then. I don’t think I will be quite sick enough to go home to Mother, who would probably sign up for a practical nursing course on the strength of this. I promise not to be too much trouble to you; however, the doctors say that on no account am I to do dishes, laundry, or housework of any kind…

  Smiling at her ingenuity, she paused to await further inspiration.

  From just outside the door, she heard a voice say, “Yes, she’s awake. I expect she’ll be glad to see you.”

  Elizabeth stuffed the unfinished letter under her pillow and slid down into the proper attitude of convalescence. Through half-lowered eyelids, she watched Milo creep into the room.

  “How are you?” he asked, taking the chair next to the bed.

  “I tire easily,” she said faintly. She turned to give him a limpid gaze, and her eyes widened. “Oh, hell,” she said, sitting up. “You look worse than I do.”

  “You’ve had more sleep,” he said, trying to smile. “Are you really okay?”

  “I’m starving.” She nodded toward the clean plate on her breakfast tray. “Other than that, fine. But promise you won’t tell Bill.”

  “He’s on his way up.”

  With a sigh, Elizabeth pulled out the sheet of notepaper and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Well, he’s too late,” she declared. “I solved this murder myself!”