Lovely In Her Bones

CHAPTER TEN

ELIZABETH, preoccupied with thoughts of the murder and its aftermath, did not stop to look at the plants along the trail. She might have noticed a coiled snake or a clump of poison oak, if her foot had been about to land on either, but otherwise she was oblivious to her surroundings. Not the right frame of mind in which to visit the Wise Woman of the Woods, she thought, but she was going anyway. When she mentioned to Milo that someone should tell Comfrey about Alex, it had suddenly occurred to her that Amelanchier was an elderly woman living alone in the woods. She should know about the danger. Elizabeth decided that she would feel better knowing that Amelanchier was all right; and perhaps the Wise Woman would have some bit of advice to comfort her.

Amelanchier was outside her cabin, talking to some visitors. Not wanting to interrupt, Elizabeth stayed hidden in a clump of laurels and listened to the consultation.

“Don’t forget what I told you about drinking sassafras tea,” Amelanchier was saying to a tall woman wearing a sundress. “Beets and asparagus’ll do you good too.”

The woman was nodding, absorbed in the lecture, while her husband, a red-faced man in doubleknit trousers and a pink polo shirt, was circling the two of them with his camera. “Ann, move your shoulder a little to the right,” he commanded. “The light’s not right.”

Amelanchier looked him over carefully and turned back to the woman. “Now, you mind what I told you about brewing your bitters from them herbs I give you.”

“Yes. Yes. I’ve written it down,” the woman assured her.

“All right,” said Amelanchier doubtfully. “But don’t you use no city water, and don’t cook it up in no aluminum pan, neither.”

“Copper?” asked the woman anxiously.

Amelanchier was scornful. “Copper’s for moonshine,” she declared. “You want to use enamel or stainless steel.”

“I will! I will!” the woman promised.

“How much do we owe you?” asked the man, lowering his camera.

“You got four bags of bitters, and two gallon jugs of it already made up. That’ll be seven dollars.”

The man smiled. “Do you have change for a twenty?”

Amelanchier hesitated. “Take it on,” she said, waving him away. “You can pay me when you’ve got it.”

The woman started to protest, but her husband led her down the path, smirking at having got something for nothing.

Elizabeth glared at them from the laurel bush. They acted as if Amelanchier were an exhibit in a zoo, she thought angrily. “Why did you let that awful man get away with that?” she demanded, marching out from her hiding place.

Amelanchier shook her head. “I didn’t hardly like to charge her. She was buying the medicine for him, and you could see he wasn’t going to take it.”

“What was the matter with him?” asked Elizabeth. He had seemed healthy enough.

“Did you look at his hands? That’s the best way to tell.” She shook her head, dismissing the tourist couple from her thoughts. She turned back to Elizabeth with a happy smile. “You’re looking a little peaky yourself, gal. What’s been going on down there?”

Elizabeth told her, omitting only the details of Alex’s personal problems with his wife and Mary Clare. “I came up to see if you were all right,” she added.

“Shoot far,” snorted Amelanchier, easing herself onto a wooden bench on the porch. “I’ve lived by myself in these woods for a coon’s age. Don’t you worry about me. But I’m sorry to hear about your boss. He seemed like a nice enough fella.”

“He was. Milo-that’s his assistant-is pretty broken up about it.” Elizabeth looked up hopefully. “I don’t suppose you have anything for grief?”

Amelanchier shrugged. “Just a handful of rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Yep. You take a handful of rocks and put them in a jar. Then once a week, you take one tiny pebble out of the jar and throw it away. When the jar is empty, why, you’ll just about be over your grief.”

Elizabeth digested the instructions. “I see,” she said at last. “You mean that it just takes time.”

“That’s right. Time alone will do if you’re short on rocks.” She closed her eyes for a while, and her face relaxed from its usual smile into creases of age. “A-lord,” she sighed. “I reckon I could use some bitters myself. How ’bout you?”

Elizabeth looked doubtful. Anything called “bitters” could not be very pleasant to drink, she thought. “What’s in it?”

Amelanchier heaved herself off the bench and over to an old icebox beside the banister. She took two paper cups from a stack on top of it and poured dark brown liquid from a gallon milk jug into each. “Take a sip of that.”

In the interests of science, thought Elizabeth. Taking a deep breath, she tasted it and was surprised to find that it was not bitter at all. “It’s a little like root beer,” she said wonderingly.

“That’s the sassafras root bark,” nodded Amelanchier. “You taste that, and the honey, which makes it sweet. There’s other things in there, too, but I don’t reckon your tongue told you that.”

“Like what?” asked Elizabeth, holding her cup out for another helping.

“Comfrey and yarrow,” said Amelanchier. “They’re my favorites. And there’s spikenard and Solomon seal and great blue lobelia, and about ten other things.”

“It’s really very good.”

“Better for you than that old sody pop.”

“What is it supposed to do?”

“Whatever you need done,” Amelanchier declared. “Once you get the bad foods out of your system, the bitters will clean you out and keep you healthy.”

Elizabeth was impressed. She wondered if the Appalachian studies department would consider a master’s thesis on Amelanchier’s brand of folk medicine. “How did you learn this?”

Amelanchier smiled. “Why, hit’s Indian medicine. Old as the hills, but I don’t reckon it’ll do much for the poor in spirit, which is how I judge you to be right now.”

Elizabeth sighed. “It’s been awful,” she admitted. “I’ve been trying not to worry about it, though.”

“No, it’s best to take things as they come,” Amelanchier agreed. “Like they say in that old hymn: ‘Farther along, we’ll know all about it.’ ”

“I guess we will,” said Elizabeth, taking the literal meaning. “The sheriff has been up here investigating. Or maybe not the sheriff himself, but some of his men. Of course, Victor claims to know it all now.”

“Victor?”

“The one I told you about who is allergic to everything. He’s full of himself today because he was out in the woods last night, and apparently he saw something. Of course he is keeping it to himself. By the way, remember that ginseng cure you gave me for him? He wouldn’t try it.”

Amelanchier nodded. “Some folks won’t. They’re afraid you’re trying to trick ’em. My gran’daddy used to say that believing nothing is just as foolish as believing everything.”

“I wish I knew what to believe about Milo,” sighed Elizabeth, still absorbed in her own troubles. “Ever since we got here, he has been so edgy, and now I can’t talk to him at all. I know he’s upset about Alex, but for heaven’s sake, I didn’t do it!”

Amelanchier reached under the bench and pulled out a paper bag. “If you’re going to sit there a-twisting your hands like that, you might as well snap beans.” She set the bag between them on the bench and handed Elizabeth a wooden bowl for her lap. “You know how, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” said Elizabeth, smiling at the memory of her Grandmother MacPherson, who wouldn’t allow a frozen vegetable past her front door. “When we visited Granny’s, this used to be my job.” Deftly she stringed and separated a bean sheath, dropping the pieces into the bowl. Soon the snapping became a steady rhythm punctuating the flow of conversation.

“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.”

“But-tonight you’re having beans and ramps?”

“Yep,” said Amelanchier, winking. “And frozen pizza!”

Dear Bill,

I know you’re going to find this out from the campus newspapers, but I thought I’d better give you more details than that. Alex Lerche has been murdered. I’m pretty sure he was killed by someone up here who wants the strip miners to get the Indians’ land; probably the same person who trashed our computer. I don’t want to go into all that right now. I just wanted you to know that I’m all right, that we’re continuing the dig, and that I’m not coming home.

It isn’t that I’m being ghoulish about wanting to stay and see who did it-which would be why you would stay-it’s because of Milo. He is terribly upset over all this, and I honestly think that if we left, he’d finish the project by himself without even stopping to eat or sleep. He’s being a perfect bear, too! I realize that men are supposed to contain their grief, but the fallout from all that suppression is very hard to live with. If you have any advice on how to cope with him without getting one’s head bitten off, I wish you would let me know. He acts as if death has just been invented to torment him. He has cornered the market on suffering. I know I sound angry, but it is a frustrating feeling to care about someone and not be allowed to help them. Milo can’t find “feelings” on his anatomy chart, so he won’t admit that they exist!

I’m not giving up, though. By all means, write to me if you think you could be of any help, but don’t come up here. I don’t think Milo could take an amateur detective playing around with this case. We should be home in a week or so. You can be vague and reassuring with Mother and Dad for that long, can’t you? Thanks!

Love,

Elizabeth