Lovely In Her Bones

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.