“I guess it’s awful of me to be worried about Milo and me when Alex has just died.”
Amelanchier shook her head. “That’s what they mean by life goes on. I reckon when you’uns get back to your college, he’ll come around.”
“Whenever that is,” muttered Elizabeth.
“Why, your boss has got himself killed. Ain’t you going home?”
“No. Milo is calling the university today to get permission to stay on.”
“Well, then he’ll be working hard, and that will be good for him. It’ll wear out the grief. Hard work is the bitters of the spirit.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I hope so.”
After a moment’s pause she added, “You haven’t been down to the dig site. Would you like to come and see what we’re doing?”
“Naw, I don’t care about seeing it,” said Amelanchier. “I reckon I’m old enough to have known some of those folks, and I’ll see them again in the hereafter. I can wait.”
“It isn’t so bad,” mumbled Elizabeth apologetically. “I don’t even think of the bones as human, somehow.”
Amelanchier smiled bitterly. “Well, that ain’t a problem they acquired lately. Folks around here didn’t think of them as human even while they were alive.” Her blue-veined hand shook a little as it dropped the bean shards into the bowl. She looked not at Elizabeth, but at the fold of green mountains framed by the porch railings and the clabbered sky. “Most of the county was Cullowhee land in the old days,” she began slowly, as if remembering. “Flat land you could farm, down on the creek bottoms. But then the whites came in wanting land, and they reckoned to steal it.”
The pile of beans fell from her lap. “If we had been regular old Indians, why, there wouldn’t have been no trick to it atall. They would have marched us out to the desert, like they did the Cherokees-but we were different. Here we was a-talking English, living in regular old cabins, and praying to Jesus, just same as them. There was only one difference.”
The old woman pressed her gnarled brown arm against Elizabeth’s white one. “They called us people of color, and said we didn’t have no rights. Got a law passed at the state capitol saying we couldn’t vote nor hold office. Hell, we couldn’t even testify in a court of law.” She closed her eyes. “Then they started in with their lawyers and their judges, and they stole all the farmland away from our people-till all we got left is the ridges and the hollers. Now I reckon they want that, too!”
“Well, they won’t get it!” said Elizabeth hotly. “Er… that law has been repealed, hasn’t it?” She twisted the snap bean between her wet fingers, feeling its wetness on her hands like blood.
“The law is gone, but the feelings stayed here right on.” Amelanchier’s eyes were dull pebbles, like uncut garnets in a creekbed.
Elizabeth shivered. Even in August it was not really warm on the mountain. The wind under the oaks bore the chill of autumn. Amelanchier sat still in her faded sundress, staring out at the mountains. After a while, she continued.
“No, the feelings ain’t gone. When my young’uns were little, we’d go into town and I could buy them a sody pop at the grill, but they’d have to stand outside to drink it.” She turned a level gaze on Elizabeth’s reddened face. “Why do you think I’m a root doctor?”
Elizabeth swallowed the facile answers, woven around Amelanchier’s Indian legend and a vague impression of her as a rustic version of a garden club lady. “Tell me.”
“The Cullowhees always had a root doctor because no town doctor would see our people. It was passed down from my gran’daddy to me, because I was the seventh child of his seventh child. Some things we can’t cure, and folks dies, but we did what we could, which is more than the white folks would.”
“But surely…”
Amelanchier gave her a tight smile. “I didn’t mean Dr. Putnam. He treats us like regular folks. But back before him, people died just because they… just because they…”
“I guess this is the other side of the Moonshine Massacre,” Elizabeth put in quickly. “No wonder y’all resented the law up here.”
The old woman waved her hand as if she were brushing away the thought. “That didn’t have much to do with it. That moonshine business was them spitting Harknesses, Bevel’s kin. They’re even worse than the blacksnake Harknesses.”
From her folklore course, Elizabeth understood that mountain families with the same last name were often distinguished by a descriptive prefix. “Why blacksnake?” she asked.
Amelanchier snorted. “On account of Varner Harkness-he must be my age if he’s a day. He used to chase girls through the briar patch waving a black snake over his head like a bullwhip.”
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “What a charming family.”
“I wouldn’t give you one red cent for the whole lot of them.”
“I know Bevel Harkness wants the strip miners to come in. Do the others agree with him?”
“I reckon they ought to, seeing as how their land is part of what the mining company wants. They’d get the money, and the rest of us would get the run-off down the creek.”
“How can those people get away with it?” demanded Elizabeth. “Can’t you turn them in for killing the sheriff’s nephew?”
Amelanchier appeared not to have heard. “I think I’ll pick ramps to go with my beans,” she announced, hoisting an ark-shaped woven basket. Fashioned of blue and lavender reeds with a handle of twisted wood, the basket seemed as much a work of art as a utensil.
“How lovely!” breathed Elizabeth. “What’s it made of?”
Amelanchier cradled the basket on her arm. “This here’s grapevine, and that’s wisteria, but-see this handle?” She pointed to the twisted branch. “That’s the best part. It’s kudzu.”
“Kudzu? Ugh!” Elizabeth displayed the Southerner’s dislike for that nuisance plant, imported to stop erosion, which strangled all the vegetation in its path. Kudzu even covered abandoned barns and houses with its jungle growth. People said that the only way to get rid of it was to burn it, roots and all.
“Yep. Kudzu is the ugliest, most trifling plant alive-but it makes a right nice basket handle, don’t it?”
Elizabeth smiled. “And the Harknesses? Do they make right nice basket handles too?”
“I reckon they’re good for something,” said Amelanchier, pleased that Elizabeth had seen the parallel.
“I don’t suppose anything could be done without the murder victim’s body anyway,” Elizabeth decided. “It was never found, was it?”
Amelanchier gripped the porch railing and crept down the steps. “You could lose something a lot bigger than a man in these hills,” she said. “You ever pick ramps? It stinks like two days past judgment, but it sure does perk up beans. Come on.”
Elizabeth watched the old woman stooping at the edge of the yard to uproot the wild onionlike plants. The smell from the broken stems was a mixture of garlic and onion, so strong that the tongue felt the heaviness of the odor. Amelanchier brushed the dirt from the white bulb roots and dropped them in the basket.
“Would you like me to do that?” asked Elizabeth, suddenly aware of how frail she looked.
Amelanchier smiled; her copper face shone with sweat. “Thank you, no. I like to keep my hand in. But I am taking it easier than what I used to.” She nodded toward the cabin. “Comfrey rigged me up a generator powered by the creek water, so I don’t have to fool with oil lamps. And I got a microwave that’s real good to dry herbs in.” Seeing Elizabeth’s look of disbelief, she added, “I keep it hid when the tourists are about. They like to think I still live on poke salad and corn pone.”
Elizabeth blinked. “But you do! I mean, what about the raccoon?”
“I love the old food when I’m up to fixing it, and I usually cook if Comfrey’s coming by, but I’m like as not to have canned spaghetti and packaged cupcakes any other time.” She shook her head. “It just don’t do to let the tourists know. They like to think that time has passed us by up here on the ridge, just like the four-lane did. They need to believe the old ways are still around as much as they need the root medicine. So I keep my store food in the root cellar.”