Cion (32 page)

It was in West Virginia, explains the elder. That was where the Quigleys who were hired guns worked. They took all their thuggery from Kilvert to West Virginia where miners were fighting for the right to unionize. The Quigleys were mine guards and became strike breakers, sometimes fighting pitched battles with the miners.

These events remind another elder of yet another Quigley who was not as good as Mahlon or as the revered first Quigley. This one ran a store owned by the mining company in Kilvert. Oh, yes, there was once a store in Kilvert!

“It left folks in debt by giving them scrip,” says the elder. “All their wages went back to the company.”

“It ain’t Quigley’s fault if folks was stupid,” says a defender of the Quigley legacy.

The elders have obviously forgotten all about me as they argue about the good old Quigley days. I quietly leave.

Mahlon is not in the forest after all but is all greasy under the hood of the GMC trying to fix something. In the kitchen Ruth is arguing with Obed. I can hear them from the living room. I dare not go in there lest I be dragged into whatever they are screaming about.

“They’re jealous of our democracy, that’s why,” says Ruth. “They’re jealous of our standard of living.”

“Why don’t they bomb Sweden, Mama? It’s a democracy with a higher standard of living. Why ain’t no one jealous of Sweden?” says Obed.

“You been reading the
Athens News.
They gonna say anything ’cause they hate America. Ain’t no country in the world that’s got a better life than the good ol’ U. S. of A.”

“Lotsa countries, Mama,” says Obed. “And no one bombs them.”

“’Cause they appease them terrorists, that’s why.”

“’Cause we mind everybody’s business, that’s why.”

Orpah appears from the inside door of her room and shouts: “Will y’all shudap? I’m trying to sleep.” She must be feeling good that they obey her order instantly. But it is really that Obed has stormed out of the kitchen and out of the house. He does not notice me sitting on one of the car seats in the living room.

Ruth walks out of the kitchen and sits at her workstation. She sobs softly. I shift uncomfortably and she notices me for the first time. She tries to hide her eyes with her hands while bowing her head. I go to her and give her my gift of a rotary cutter and ruler. She looks at them for some time and then smiles wanly at me.

“Thank you,” she says.

“I am sorry Obed annoys you so,” I say. “I don’t think you two should take politics so personally.”

I almost add that I doubt if her hero, the man who runs the whole country, gets as many sleepless nights as she does over international affairs, but think better of it.

“It ain’t that,” says Ruth between sniffles. It’s just that her children don’t appreciate her. No one appreciates her for the sacrifices she has made for the family. Then she sobs once more. I never know what to do in such situations. I don’t have a tissue to hand her. I stand there for a few seconds looking foolish, and then I quietly make for the door.

Obed is with his father under the hood of the GMC. He sees me and his face lights up. I know immediately that there is a new money-making scheme he wants to share with me.

“Hey, homey, don’t see much of you lately,” he says, coming to join me on the porch. We sit down on the steps.

“You shouldn’t do this to your mother,” I say.

He says Ruth started the whole thing. All he was asking for was the GMC for a few days because he has to see his Shawnee brothers in Oklahoma on a matter that will benefit the family. If she had given him the pickup he would have borrowed some money from me since he knows for sure he would be able to pay me back with a hundred percent interest. When he explained his mission to Ruth she pooh-poohed the whole idea, and added insult to injury by claiming that the Quigleys have no Shawnee blood in them. They are Cherokee. It was only then that he decided to hurt Ruth by condemning America’s international adventurism. He knows which buttons to press to raise his mother’s blood pressure.

He shows me a book he is currently reading—thanks to Beth Eddy—that is opening his eyes to the things that are happening out there in the world.
The Rule of Christian Fundamentalists
is the title.

I congratulate him for reading a book but question the wisdom of driving all the way to Oklahoma in search of his people’s mystic secrets.

“I know you want to be a shaman, but you may be chasing a mirage,” I add.

“It ain’t nothing like that,” he assures me.

He wants to attend a tribal convocation where he is going to present a case for Kilvert to the Shawnee chiefs and elders. He takes out a page of the
Athens News
from his book and unfolds it.

There is a map that shows the counties that are the subject of this litigation. Basically these are the counties that are enclosed by the Miami River in the west, the Ohio River in the south and the southeast, and the Hocking River in the east and a line north of Columbus. The suit, based on the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, claims that historically the Shawnee hunting grounds stretched from the Hocking River, and Obed wants to ascertain that Kilvert is included there.

“This is the chance for my people,” he says. “We gonna have a casino in Kilvert one of them days.”

He has been following this issue for quite some time, even before the paper publicized it. He wants this casino very much for his children and will not let Ruth’s insistence on a Cherokee heritage deprive him of what is rightfully his. It becomes obvious to me that here we have the present reshaping the past in its image.

“You don’t have children,” I say.

“I am gonna have them one day,” he says matter-of-factly.

“With Beth Eddy?”

He chuckles shyly and says: “It don’t matter with who.”

“She’s a good influence. Now you’re shy all of a sudden.”

“She don’t influence me no how. It don’t mean just because she’s a college girl she influence me.”

“She makes you read.”

“I make me read.”

“She is beautiful,” I say.

“She’s put together good,” he agrees and laughs.

Ruth walks out of the house. I suspect she is not pleased to see the “boy” who infuriated her only a few minutes ago sitting on the steps with me and laughing in such a carefree manner. She mutters something to herself. It is really meant for our ears. She says that ever since I came here her children think they know everything. And now I think I am going to buy everybody with presents. First I gave Mr. Quigley a gnome. And now I am trying to bribe her with newfangled quilting tools that she will never use since her mother and her grandmother taught her how to quilt the right way.

“That’s what the Devil gone and done to Christ…with ten pieces of silver.”

“They was thirty, Mama,” Obed calls after her as she takes the corner. “They was thirty pieces of silver.”

We no longer hear what else she has to say. Obed laughs even louder at my befuddled look.

I get another opportunity to mourn at a live funeral. Sister Naomi’s funeral. She had continued to keep the sheriff busy with her meth labs, despite the fact that Brother Michael and the congregation spent hours praying for her and on three occasions she testified in the chocolate church that she had finally seen the light and her ways had changed. The Lord had mercy on her, but super-speed was merciless. It made her do things that were frowned upon by good Christians like Ruth. Such as cruising the bars of Athens looking for men and demanding that they should do her in the backseats of their cars. Super-speed made her insatiable. She was indeed uncontrollable and people started questioning why she was set free from the slammer since she did not seem to have learned any lessons from her son’s death. Well, she was freed because she denied knowing anything about the meth lab in the van, and her boyfriend was the one who was found guilty and was serving a long prison term in Nelsonville.

Kilverters had to watch helplessly as Sister Naomi wasted away, spending up to twelve hours a day in bed, fast asleep, neglecting everything and everybody, hiding the smile that used to be so brilliant. Her teeth had now fallen out and her gums were black. She was losing so much weight she was but a skeleton. Her skin had lesions. “She looks like she’s been bobbing for French fries,” the women at the Center whispered. She was too far gone to be saved from the addiction, and when she died there was relief all around. And all this happened so fast, in a matter of weeks.

I am sitting on a mound, as is my custom, wailing softly as Brother Michael reads the scriptures. He testifies on how Sister Naomi used to be the pillar of the church. People should rather remember her beautiful voice when she sang for the Lord rather than the last days of her life when the Devil tempted and won her soul over.

“But who are we to judge?” he asks in his booming voice. “Who are we to cast the first stone?”

I punctuate these words with squeals borrowed and adapted from Sister Naomi’s own atrocious singing as I remember it that single occasion I went to the chocolate church—when Sister Naomi was still Sister Naomi. Despite my spirited mourning both Ruth and Mahlon pretend that I am not here at all. Not even a glance in my direction. They look fixedly at the coffin as it is lowered in the grave. Mahlon’s smile is even more pronounced. Ruth’s face is expressionless.

Orpah is here too in her shimmering black dress and lampshade hat. She came with me this time. Early in the morning she came to my RV all dressed up and ready for the funeral. It was in blatant defiance of her parents, who decreed after I moved out of their house that the “children” should have nothing to do with me. Orpah has been to my RV almost every day to see if things were all right with me. So has Obed, before he took the Greyhound to Connecticut where he hopes to connect with casino bosses who will give him a few pointers on how to establish one in Kilvert.

He was not very pleased with me when he left yesterday because he felt I was not being helpful in his venture. First of all I had expressed my disapproval when I discovered that his real reason for reclaiming his heritage was that he wanted to have his own casino. He had no qualms about it because he claimed that many other people who had no connection at all to that heritage were reaping millions from it. Why shouldn’t he, a true son of the tribes, get his share?

I made things worse when I refused to go to Connecticut with him to look for Sol Kerzner, a South African who had taken advantage of apartheid laws and established casinos in South Africa’s own black reservations. When he heard that the South African billionaire had subsequently established casinos at the Native American reservations in Connecticut, and these were doing wonderfully both for him and the Native American shareholders, he imagined that if he went to see the man with me things would be much smoother. He argued that I should accompany him to Connecticut because my South African origins would gain us an audience with the man. He brought with him a black striped suit that he found at the Center and suggested that I should spruce myself up and look like a proper businessman.

“I am just a professional mourner, Obed,” I told him. “A billionaire like Kerzner would know nothing about me. Nor would he wish to see me.”

When he left in the morning to catch a bus to Columbus and then another one to Connecticut he did not come to my RV to say goodbye. He could have left after Sister Naomi’s funeral, who was after all some aunt of his, but I supposed he decided to miss my mourning as a way of punishing me. Well, he has missed the new sounds that I have invented especially for this funeral. As the biggest fan of my mourning routine he would have marveled at the way I am able to toss my audience around and then throw them on an emotional roller-coaster depending on the theme of the hymn or on Brother Michael’s readings and preachings.