“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Why wouldn’t he be real?” Tattler’s voice turned high and young. “It’s told he scares the bejeezus outta people who walk on his property is what he does. Heard he killed a poacher for shooting a dang turkey in front of his house. You wanna believe that?”
“How’d he kill the poacher if him a spook?”
“The spook stopped that poacher’s heart, is what he done. Died right there on the ground next to the dead turkey he killed. Some sorry soul walking by come up on em two dead corpses. Almost had his self a heart attack. If he did”—Tattler stopped and did the math quick—“there’d be three dead corpses.”
“Bet that sorry soul took that turkey home and cooked it.”
“Well, I don’t hear that part… I wouldn’t pick up a dead turkey on the ground next to a dead man.”
“Even if you was hungry?”
“No, ma’am. I would not touch a dead turkey on Old Nate’s farm,” he said loud enough for Old Nate’s spirit to hear him.
“Even if you was starved three days?”
“Well…”
“Even if your innards got tied in a knot so painful you can’t stand up straight?”
Tattler chewed on his thumbnail, a worry sign his brain’s sorting out killer ghosts and dead turkeys.
“Well…when you put it that way—”
“Uh-huh. Hungry changes things.”
We walked by Old Nate’s weedy apple orchard smelling of hard cider from rotten fruit on the ground. A few wormy apples hung in easy reach. The boy looked, but he don’t take. He said, “I don’t wanna be on Old Nate’s farm come sundown, Birdie. Just in case…you know.”
Samuel cawed.
“I hear you.”
? ? ?
Crows give me my name Birdie Rocas. Must have been one in another life cause the comfort I feel with them birds is natural. The crow who stays with me most days—now that him and me are getting up in years—is named Samuel. He’s smart. He finds things, fixes things, figures out riddles. Like today, Samuel rides on top of my head, like he always does when he gets the notion to warm my brain. All’s right in the world when Samuel and his kind are around, soaring on a breeze, nesting in the trees, and strutting on the earth.
Or riding on my head.
I’m midwife, medicine woman, and storywriter for these parts. For my kind of stories, I don’t sit round the fire spinning yarns and giving goose bumps like Tattler’s tale bout Old Nate. What I do is collect truth that bends easy if you won’t careful, and I write it down in my book where it stays put.
My Books of Truths is bound in soft leather made from the hide of a twelve-point buck I took down with my own bow and arrow. He stopped twenty paces in front of my lean-to when I was a girl learning the ways of the woods from a Injun called Gray Wolf.
That Injun let me glean secrets from him out in the beyond. He had skin the color of tupelo honey, but he was as tough as beef jerky. He went to the woods to die, and I slowed down his leaving cause I had need of him, and he obliged me.
That man’s hair glowed silver, and the braid of it lay down his brown back in summer, or over a bearskin in the cold so I could find him in the gloom of the woods. I followed that braid from one season into the next and learned plant magic. Dutchman’s pipe helps gas and lung troubles. The leaves of maidenhair ease coughs, and yarrow, the fever.
Gray Wolf was a Cherokee, and his native roots run deep in these mountains, back to the start of time, before Baines Creek got a white man’s name. When my kin settled here two hundred years ago, bones—or baines, like they was called in the old country—littered the ground. Couldn’t turn over a spade of dirt without finding a bit of baine. A war with the Injuns, Brits, Yankees, and settlers made a mess of things way back.
Baines Creek is mostly peaceful since then cept for moonshining, revenuers, ginseng hunters, and jaspers. More bodies been buried since and got turned to bone. That’s a fact.
The day in the long-ago woods when I was a girl was a queer one. That buck stood still and looked at me like he knew he would be special in my life for all time. He gave his self to my Books of Truths. Those pages grew thick over time, and when I write, I touch his hide that’s turned soft with handling.
I use a quill to put words in my books. Made my first one bout the time I killed the buck. I made it from a turkey feather, stiff and straight. Soaked it overnight in water and cut the tip at a slant. The ink comes from blackberry juice, vinegar, salt, and water. Been using turkey quills and my own ink for sixty years. They lay words neat and honest on paper.
I write down the usual births and deaths, but what makes me pick up the quill and lay down story words is when life don’t make sense.
One time, I write bout a swarm of speckled butterflies that come through these hills and stayed two weeks on the ridge they never lived on before. The mountain shimmered them weeks long ago like it was alive. Then the butterflies left with only my words to remember em by.
Then there’s the story of the chestnut tree that up and quit long ago and was the scariest thing I ever been witness to. It flummoxed everybody something terrible. Was like the end of the world when those ancient trees decided to die. Chestnuts was here…then they won’t.
When the dying started way back when I was a girl, truckloads of jaspers come to these mountains and scratched their heads. They hauled cameras up steep hillsides to take pictures of the war zone. That’s what they called it: the war zone. The leaves dropped off early and crunched underfoot when the air was still warm. Age-old limbs shriveled up, then trunks split open showing the heart of em trees was gone. That was one sad story.
The chestnut trees leaving long ago changed mountain life. It left a hardship for every man and every critter to this day. Back then, chestnut wood cut into wide boards made cabins and furniture that don’t rot. Chestnuts used to feed folks and four-legged critters with its carrot-tasting nut. And Injuns used them nuts and leaves to tend to whooping cough and heart ailments. Now we dig ginseng for money and a remedy. And shiners make hooch. Money gotta be made some other way with the chestnut tree gone.
Sometimes I feel this old mountain breathing weary. The high, thin air gets sucked deep into her lungs, all the way back to the start of time. I know her secrets and sins. This high place is hard on folks who give in or give up. For those who stay, Baines Creek is enough.
? ? ?
We was getting close to the honey hole and nobody messed with us yet, but that don’t mean they won’t watching. Samuel acted fidgety so I paid attention. The going was steep up that last ridge, and Tattler got in front and hold out his digging stick for me to grab and pull. We made it to the top when I said, “We here.”