Authors: CJ Lyons
Caitlyn shook her head; dates and history had never been her strong suit. “So they
fought on the losing side.”
“That’s not the point,” Bearmeat said. “Owning slaves was abolished by act of the
Cherokee National Council in 1863. Then, a year after the Civil War ended, the former
slaves, the freedmen, became citizens of the Cherokee Nation in accordance with a
treaty negotiated between the Oklahoma Cherokees with the federal government.”
“So the freedmen are Cherokees.”
“That’s the controversy. What Lena was researching.”
“You see,” Paul said, “the cases have been going through both tribal courts and federal
ones since the 1980s. But those cases didn’t apply here to the Eastern Band of Cherokees.”
Bearmeat took over. The two men were in sync, even though Bearmeat had spent a lifetime
studying this and Paul had only had a few hours. If she was less confident and less
impatient, Caitlyn might have been intimidated by their intellectual superiority.
As it was, she was struggling not to interrupt and ask them to cut to the chase.
“After the Civil War, the Eastern Band made a pact with their freedmen,” Bearmeat
said. “They couldn’t negate the treaty with the federal government, not without risking
losing the tenuous status they had gained after siding with the Confederacy, but they
realized that their strength, indeed the only way to ensure their continued existence
as Cherokees, was to maintain their racial purity. So they formed the pact.”
“Still no idea what the pact is.” Neither man noticed her tone. If they had, they
would have hurried up.
“It was an agreement with the freedmen,” Paul explained. “The Eastern Band couldn’t
just kick them off the reservation, not without repercussions from the government.
So they offered the freedmen land for their own use. They could live on the reservation
as members of the Cherokee Nation as recognized by the federal government but they
would give up their rights as tribal members.”
“After the Civil War, most around here couldn’t afford to own land. Here inside the
Qualla Boundary, the freedmen were given land for free, theirs to use in perpetuity.
If they agreed not to seek full tribal membership.”
“Why would Lena think my dad had anything to do with a treaty signed over a hundred
years ago?”
Bearmeat didn’t answer. Instead he rose, carefully placed his teacup and napkin beside
the coffeemaker, then pulled open one of the thin flat drawers of the steel filing
case it sat on. At first Caitlyn had thought the drawers held maps since they were
extra wide and deep but thin. Instead of a map, though, Bearmeat withdrew a large
sheet of paper: a facsimile of an old parchment or sheepskin.
He walked past her and laid it out on the empty conference table outside his door.
She and Paul followed.
“This is just a modern photocopy,” he said, despite the fact that he treated the piece
of paper like it was King Tut’s tiara. Caitlyn crowded in between Paul and Bearmeat
to take a look. There was a flourish of handwritten English on the top and beautifully
drawn characters below, followed by a row of signatures. One of the signatures belonged
to an Elijah Hale, one of the Hale family ancestors.
“So that’s Cherokee writing on the bottom?”
“Correct.” He sighed. “We lost the original. Back in 1988.”
“That’s when my dad died.”
Bearmeat shrugged. “No idea about that. Last time I spoke with Lena she was taking
a copy of the pact to a Cherokee translator.”
Caitlyn’s shoulders drooped in disappointment. For a moment there she’d thought the
archivist might know what connected her father’s death to Lena’s disappearance. Maybe
even give her a lead, either to Lena or the truth about her dad.
Then Bearmeat looked up from the text of the old document. “Unless—I don’t suppose
your father had anything to do with Tommy Shadwick’s murder? Because he was the last
person who checked out the original pact from the archives. Same night he was killed,
in fact.”
* * *
Bernie was burning up. Moaning in his sleep. His eyes were turning yellow—that couldn’t
be good. Lena checked his arm where the leopard had scratched him. The wounds weren’t
bleeding anymore and although they were a little bruised and swollen, there wasn’t
any redness or signs of infection. Plus, it’d come on so fast. Maybe he’d been sick
before the leopard clawed him?
Didn’t matter. He needed help. Now.
She searched his cabin. Found parts from motorcycles, dirty laundry, canned goods
and frozen dinners, economy-sized bags of dog food, and stacks and stacks of comic
books and old paperbacks. Portrait of a lonely man.
But she didn’t find what she’d been looking for: a phone or computer. Some way to
call for help. She searched Bernie’s pockets. Found a handful of bullets. Checked
the gun he’d given her, figured out how to open the wheel that held the bullets and
found it empty.
He didn’t trust her with a loaded gun. Was that because he was trying to fool her
or because he wasn’t stupid enough to give a loaded gun to a scared girl who’d never
held one before?
There was no safety she could find, so she decided it was probably the latter. The
leopard still paced the tin roof overhead. The sun was up; shouldn’t the animal be
in bed?
She gingerly slid four bullets into the little slots on the gun. Then she closed the
wheel, snapped it into place so that there were two empty holes lined up for the next
shots. That meant she’d have to squeeze the trigger three times before shooting anything.
It was the safest way she could think to carry the weapon. And no way she was going
outside without it. Not with the leopard still on the prowl.
She arranged a chair between the window and Bernie’s bed, alternating between trying
to get him to drink some Gatorade and watching for the leopard. Finally it leapt to
the ground and vanished into the trees. If she was going to go for help, this was
her chance.
“I’ll be back,” she told Bernie.
He groaned and gripped her hand. Sweat had soaked through his shirt and the sheet.
“Don’t go. Not safe.”
“You need help. I’ll be back.” She wiped his face with a damp cloth. “Is there a car?”
He nodded. “Beside your cabin. Take my truck. It’s cold.”
Chills made his teeth chatter and she wasn’t sure if he was talking about the weather
or his fever.
“Lena.” He said her name like it was something special. “Be careful.” He slumped back
on the pillow, the few words draining him.
She grabbed her coat and glanced once more out the window. No sign of the leopard.
Now or never.
The sun was bright enough to have burned away the thick fog that had surrounded the
cabin most of the morning. The snow was already melted as well, although clouds building
over the mountains to the west promised more to come. She buttoned her coat tight
against the wind. The gun felt cold and heavy in her naked hand.
In the light of day, she understood why she’d gotten so disoriented last night. A
clearing had been carved out of the forest for the lodge and the surrounding cabins.
It was large enough that each cabin had privacy, maybe fifty to sixty feet separating
it from its neighbors. Looking toward the center where the lodge stood, its log walls
darkened by age, you had the feeling of wide-open spaces. But along the perimeter
trees towered over the single-story cabins, swaying in the wind like they were playing
Red Rover and daring anyone to leave the cleared space with its illusion of civilization
and come over to the wild side.
Past the trees to the south and east was empty sky, only the faintest hint of mountains
beyond the valley below. To the north and west, craggy peaks covered in ice and fog,
their shadows crowding out the sunlight.
Long way from the Hayti neighborhood Lena had grown up in in Durham. She was totally
out of her element.
She bent her head to the wind but tried to keep an eye out for any movement as she
hurried across the clearing to the cabin where her little Honda sat beside a big,
black pickup truck. As she approached the cars she heard a chattering noise behind
her.
“Smokey! You’re okay.” She pocketed the gun and held her arms open, surprised by how
relieved she was to see the chimp. Smokey rushed her, pulling back at the last minute
so she didn’t bowl Lena over, not hugging her but pressing her nose against Lena’s
chest, face, neck as she patted Lena’s body as if checking for injuries.
“I’m fine. Where are your friends?” Lena looked around. No sign of the other chimps.
Hopefully the leopard hadn’t gotten them. No. If it had, it wouldn’t have been hanging
around Bernie’s cabin all morning, it would have been feasting.
She took Smokey’s hand, feeling better for having the chimp with her. How crazy was
that? But in less than a week her entire world had been toppled, everything she believed
cast into doubt. All she had left was her faith in God, and even that had been strained.
But look what He’d done to deliver her. Sent her Smokey and her family, sent her Bernie
just in time to save Lena’s life, sent her comfort and solace in the midst of her
despair.
As she and Smokey crossed the brown grass made mushy by last night’s snow, she sent
a quick prayer of thanksgiving aimed at the highest mountaintop above them. A large
bird appeared, spiraling upward toward the sun, and she smiled. God was still listening.
What more could a flawed human like herself ask?
The answer came faster than she would have liked. Just as they reached the Honda,
Lena saw that it had sunk into the mud up to its hubcaps. Tires flat. All of them.
The truck’s as well.
Someone had been here, done this. Bernie? No, he wouldn’t prevent his own escape.
All he had to do was hide the keys.
Glancing over her shoulder, she walked around the two vehicles. Bernie’s truck keys
were in the ignition. So, definitely not Bernie who’d slashed the tires. And not a
leopard or bunch of chimps.
She stopped at the passenger side of the Honda on the opposite side from Bernie’s
truck and the cabin where she’d been imprisoned. Hairs on her neck prickled and she
whirled around, expecting to see a man wielding a knife. Nothing. Just wind blowing
dead leaves across the lawn.
The feeling of being watched didn’t go away. She turned back to the cabin, about to
go inside to search for her belongings, when Smokey began making a low, throaty noise
and tug at her arm.
Lena looked up. The leopard was on the cabin roof, back legs bent as it prepared to
pounce.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Caitlyn whirled on Bearmeat. “You think Tommy Shadwick was killed because of a piece
of paper?”
Bearmeat shrugged. “Do you know almost no one talks about Tommy anymore? Much less
the reasons why he died. He was the only council member who opposed the VistaView,
thought the casino would corrupt our people. No one remembers that or how he fought
to protect our language and culture. Without him we wouldn’t be teaching Cherokee
in our schools, much less preserving our oral traditions.”
All fine and well but it didn’t get her closer to understanding why Shadwick was killed
or what that had to do with Lena or her dad.
Paul chimed in, “Eli Hale said he killed Tommy because Tommy opposed giving the freedmen
tribal membership. Maybe Eli thought destroying the pact as well as eliminating Tommy’s
opposition would help the freedmen?”
“Destroying the original pact wouldn’t help,” Bearmeat said. “There are copies here
and in Raleigh. In fact, the only reason the original was here was because the tribal
council had organized a display of important Eastern Band land grants and deeds for
the general meeting where the vote on the casino development would take place. Its
value lay in the fact that it was a historical document, not that it was irreplaceable.”
More jibber-jabber, still nothing concrete for Caitlyn to follow up. “You said Lena
took a copy to an interpreter?”
“Yes, Sharleen LittleJohn. My own Cherokee is rudimentary at best,” Bearmeat confessed.
“I was raised in Bryson City, didn’t return here until after I graduated with my Ph.D.”
He drew Caitlyn a map on a piece of paper and added directions in careful block print.
“Paul, could you keep working with Mr. Bearmeat?” Caitlyn asked. “I think we’re on
to something here, I’m just not sure what.”
“Sure, okay.” He was distracted by a bound selection of old maps lying on the conference
table. “Meet back here?”
“Call me if you find anything.” She thanked Bearmeat and ducked out before either
of the men noticed.
She’d just reached the Impreza when her phone rang. “Is this the fed looking for that
black girl?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“Never you mind. You want to find that girl before it’s too late, you’d better hurry.
She’s at her dad’s place on McSwain Mountain.”
The woman hung up before Caitlyn could ask anything else. Number blocked. Of course.
She sat in the driver’s seat waiting for the car to warm up. Using a woman to make
the call was smart—they’d think she’d be less wary. Too bad they didn’t know Caitlyn’s
motto—
Trust no one, assume nothing
—had been drilled into her at a young age.
Abandonment issues the bureau shrinks would have diagnosed if she ever gave them a
chance. Idiots. A nine-year-old girl finding her father’s body, realizing her hero
had betrayed her, left her? And then growing up with a mother who treated her more
like a roommate than a daughter? No shit she had issues.
But it was those issues, trust, abandonment, whatever you called them, that had kept
her alive this far. She wasn’t about to change now.
The question wasn’t if the phone call was a trap, it was how to use it to her advantage.
* * *
The plan was for Weasel to wait for Tierney at the old Hale house. One of his girls
back at the clubhouse would call Tierney and send her there while Goose trailed behind
to make sure she came alone and to block her escape.