An Undisturbed Peace (28 page)

“So. Last summer these two beleaguered lovers came to me at my home in Ross's Landing, you know, that place on the Tennessee River where I have my trading post and ferry business. They came in the night under cover of darkness, rapping at the window of my study, where I worked while the rest of the household slept. I thought them birds, they were so light in their touch. I looked up expecting to see ravens perhaps or some other night birds bearing omens in their beaks. No. It was those two. His features were hidden in the hood of his cloak as was only prudent when he was out of Chota, but she, ah! Who could forget that face? Those eyes that even through the darkness shone like the stubborn embers of a dying fire? That mouth? I signaled for them to approach the front door, at which I gave them entry. Stealthily, we returned to my study and straightaway I asked, ‘What are you doing here?'

“Jacob spoke first. ‘I am here to inform you, Great Chief, that we are leaving Chota and to give you these keys to the house the nation has allowed me these many years. We have left it intact with all the nation's gifts to me. You may wish to retrieve them.' He reached in his breast pocket, an action that exposed his ruined face. I kept my gaze steady so as not to offend. ‘And here is a map of the graves I attended, along with the many keepsakes of heroes who are gone but whose bones are elsewhere or were lost in battle. I know you know where the graves are, but'—here he made a gesture of uncertainty—‘we do not know what their fate will be without a guardian.' He finished his speech and stepped back, his head down as his eyes had tears. Dark Water came to stand beside him, her arm around his shoulder.

“I stammered my gratitude. It was difficult, even for me—a man who addresses the president of the United States, his wily men, and all the Cherokee Nation under the most difficult conditions—to take in the shock of how they had fallen from grace.” John Ross paused and put his head back against the settee. He looked at the rafters and shuddered. “What I fear the most, Mr. Sassaporta, is that such is the fate of all my people.” He gave out a bitter laugh. “Only worse!”

Abe was in a state of great suspense. It erupted.

“What do you mean by ‘fall from grace'? Tell me! For pity's sake!”

To his credit, John Ross did not react to Abe's impertinence but resumed his account.

“Simply put, they were in tatters, impoverished. They appeared weakened from malnourishment, exhaustion, and anxiety. They were dirty too. That was especially heartbreaking. Do you know how important cleanliness is to Indians, Mr. Sassaporta? Their condition could only mean that they had been closed to water. Water. For the Cherokee, it is like gold to the whites. A sacred thing. How had this come to be? How had two people highly skilled in living without the conveniences of what the whites call ‘civilization' come to such a state? I believe, after thinking about it, that several elements led to their downfall. First, as I mentioned, game is scarce now from the lower towns to the mountain villages. The settlers near Chota hunt everything the Earth provided for our people. The settlers care not if they kill does with child or take the mother bird from her chicks, leaving them to starve. Second, our friends could not be seen together without great risk from both whites and those of the Cherokee who were their enemies. Third, they had what you might call special problems complicated by their impoverishment.”

“What special problems?”

“Dark Water was with child.”

“Oh!” Abe was shocked. With child! Marian with child! He'd always considered her age a barrier to procreation. Dozens of thoughts cascaded through his mind. That her new child and his would be about the same age. That he might have given her a child in the past. And yet it was Jacob who had done so. Was that what people meant when they spoke of the miracle of life? Was that the holy key to all its mysteries? Love? He struggled to return his attention to John Ross.

“Yes, she was with child but not so far along at the time. Just enough so that when she draped her arm around Jacob's shoulder, the thin clothing she wore, a tear dress and a worn buckskin shirt, emphasized her condition, a condition that put both of them in danger in more ways than one. Hurriedly, I gave them what I could. In the kitchen, I found a couple of sacks. I filled them with as much clothing, food, and coin as the sacks could carry. On impulse, I added a silver dish. I took them to my stables and gave them two horses. Then, because it was coming near the dawn, I sent them on their way before the people of the town rose and found them out. Once they were off, I prayed.”

Abe's mind continued to spin. Hannah's perception was right. They were in extremity. His Marian, with child!

“Please, sir, Chief Ross, you must tell me. What happened to them next? Do you know? Where were they going? To her brother's settlement? To the mountains?”

“Immediately, of course, they were going to you, although I imagine it took much time, under the circumstances. After they paid you this visit, which I understood was intended as ceremonial like the one they made me, committed to expressing gratitude and such, they intended to go to the mountains, yes, but not to her brother's. That would be indiscreet. And dangerous. Her mother, who has never forgiven Jacob, is yet alive. I cherish the hope that what I gave them plus what they could barter for the dish would take them somewhere they might find respite and a new home, if only they arrived before the winter took hold.”

There was quiet between them then. Abe had discovered what he came to know. Now that he'd time to notice it, he realized Chief John Ross appeared exhausted. The man's head lolled against the settee and his eyes were closed to near slits. Without further fuss, Abe thanked him for his audience and bid him fare-thee-well, offering as a matter of politesse to be of service whenever, however the chief might need him. He also requested that he be informed if there were ever fresh news of Jacob and Dark Water.

The small man guided him to the door. As he opened it, he gave Abe a most studied look, intense and filled with urgency. He then stuffed into Abe's hand a square of parchment, folded over three times. Before Abe had time to investigate it, the small man closed the door behind him, leaving Abe to open the note in the privacy of the vacant corridor. He did so. There was a message, but it was written in Sequoya's alphabet, which he could not read. Placing it in his pocket, he quit the Federalist Hotel for his bed at Ethel Mae's Rooms, where he lay sleepless, reviewing with a weight pressing against his heart all that Chief John Ross had told him. In the morning, he headed for home, relating to Hart all along the way the information he'd gathered on their old friends, pausing many times to sigh, to fret, to imagine calamity. He was a man. He could worry only so long before he put his mind to a solution. After rigorous thought, he devised the best plan he could to find and help them. He made a detour, stopping at the old camp town, where Abe paid a visit to O'Hanlon.

The camp town was much changed. The barracks were gone, replaced by a row of cabins in which married peddlers lived or small groups of bachelors shared a hearth. The streets were not so muddied. The main street had been bricked. Gardens sprouted here and there. The company store had transformed itself into a bright, cheery spot. Mannequins dressed in seasonable clothing flanked its entry. Through sparkling windows, he noted its canned goods with colorful, appetizing labels displayed in escalating rows of shelves next to placards advertising special discounts. Fresh game and domestic fowl hung by their feet from a wire above the front desk. There was a new building, whitewashed and shuttered, with a large bell mounted in a hoop on the front porch next to a joggling board marking the place a school. Children! Jacob thought. They are everywhere these days! He wondered about Marian's child. The weight against his heart grew, expanding like a sodden sponge.

“O'Hanlon, it's good to see you well,” he said when he found the man and repaired to his rooms. They exchanged pleasantries. As it was midafternoon, O'Hanlon put out a bit of soda bread and a pot of tea. After a few sips, Abe came to the point. “My friend, do you recall the Cherokee woman to whom I was attached before my marriage?”

The Irishman raised his great red eyebrows and nodded. His lips pursed with curiosity.

“For complicated reasons, she and her husband are hiding out somewhere hereabouts, at least this is what I hope, and I wish to find them. They are in need and I am pledged in heart and conscience to help them. Do you know someone, a tracker perhaps, who can do the job? They are a distinctive couple with a small child. If they are in these hills or mountains, surely they can be found.”

Without a word, O'Hanlon put his teacup on the fireplace mantel and went to the top of the stairs that led to the stablemen's quarters below. “Charlie, me lad,” he called down, “fetch me Mr. Broken Branch if you don't mind.” He stood by the mantel and took up his tea. “We have more than a few Georgian Cherokee with us nowadays,” he explained to Abe. “Poor lads are displaced by settlers, homeless and without support. They make good workers but not as salesmen, I can tell you that, mostly as the settlers would sooner shoot 'em than listen to a pitch. So I hire as many as I can to help about.”

“I'm glad you do.” Abe reached in his jacket and pulled out the note the chief's man had given him. “I hope he reads Cherokee. I may have information that will help in finding these people but it's written in their language.”

They waited for Mr. Broken Branch. Wrestling him up took some time. Abe fidgeted, getting up, going to the door to listen for his approach, looking out the windows for sight of the same, at last sitting down again, elbows on a tabletop, head in his hands. O'Hanlon watched him, thinking on matters of love and loss. “And how is your mam these days?” he asked. “Still happy as a clam with your uncle?” Abe's head shot up. “Yes! Of course!” A shadow passed over O'Hanlon's features, giving Abe cause to regret his brash reply. Once love has entered a man's heart, he acknowledged, it lodges there until the grave. They finished their waiting in silence, each man meditating on old delights, unfaded in remembrance, mellow and ripe, until the arrival of the Georgian Cherokee disrupted their reveries.

Mr. Broken Branch was a man in middle age, a full blood it was easy to see, his strong features worn by time and troubles. His hair was clipped beneath his hat, his attire that of a white man. When Abe asked if he could read the note, his chin went up. “We all read, if we care to,” he said. He took the note in hand. “It says, ‘Look southwest of the brother's keep, though higher up.'” He frowned. “Does this have meaning for you?” Relief flooded Abe in a bolt of energy. He bounded up and took Mr. Broken Branch by the shoulders. “Yes, my man, yes, it does! And glorious meaning too! Now I have a direction to find loved ones I thought lost to me!” O'Hanlon then asked Mr. Broken Branch if he could help find these people. “They are Cherokee,” he said. “Their names are …” He looked over to Abe, who filled in, “Jacob, a black slave with no surname, and Dark Water Redhand. Do you know them?” If Mr. Broken Branch was surprised by Abe's revelation, he did not show it but kept his features still and said, “Everyone knows them. If they do not wish to be found, you will not.”

Abe was undeterred by the man's suggestion of failure before the search had rightly begun. That night, he gathered Mr. Broken Branch and several of his fellow Georgian Cherokee in O'Hanlon's living room. He made them an offer of five dollars each in gold to search for Jacob and Dark Water, with a bonus promised of twenty more in greenbacks if they were located. He did not consider whether he could afford such a rich reward, but vowed if not he would find the moneys somewhere, somehow. As insurance, he put out a notice to all peddlers who traveled the high places to be on the lookout for the two, described as a black male, disfigured by war, and a mature Cherokee woman of graceful and handsome mien, adding that they likely had a child with them. He offered a twenty-five-dollar reward for their location with the caveat that they be left unmolested. The next morning, he arose enthused by the stratagems he'd put in place. His hope was renewed.

Once he'd returned to Greensborough, life as usual asserted itself. At first he waited on tenterhooks for news from his search parties. None arrived. As time wore on, he came to accept not defeat but that results would require patience. He sent out word to his peddlers that the reward was increased to forty dollars, but he won not even a fanciful rumor of Jacob and Dark Water's whereabouts for his trouble. In the meantime, his son, Judah, was born. A rabbi from Charleston was hired for the circumcision. Abe was so delighted by Hannah's acceptance of that event, he forgot for a time that other child, alive or dead in a cave in the cold mountains of the high country only to be suffused with guilt later on when the wails of a dark-skinned Indian child came to him in dreams.

The Quakers of the town found his efforts in Washington redemptive. The rubber debacle was at last and finally forgiven. His life turned busy, rich, filled with familial obligations, rewarding hard work, and simple pleasures. Occasionally, at sentimental moments, he took out from its resting place in a box with a bird's beak for a clasp, the small man's parchment, the one folded over three times. He unfolded it and muttered to himself, “Look southwest of the brother's keep, but higher up” in remembrance. Then he muttered the phrase again, adding at the end
Baruch Ha-Shem
as a prayer. Afterward, he'd fold it up again and put it back in its special box where he kept Raquel's first tooth and a lock of Judah's fine, curly hair. Weeks turned into months, months to seasons, with no clues as to Jacob and Dark Water's whereabouts. For all of that, Abe could not give up the notion that one day he would see Marian again.

In 1833, the last of the Choctaw were removed from their land. The weather was clear, the convoys were supplied minimally if not plentifully, and no plagues followed them, only the usual dysentery and croup. When they took the children to Tobias Milner's farm for a visit, Abe happened to read an analysis of Choctaw removal published in one of his father-in-law's periodicals. In three years of transport, the article read, 8,000 Choctaw souls had made it to the new western home, and 2,500 had perished along the way. Now that the US government had learned methods to transport thousands efficiently and safely, the author boastfully surmised, future Indian removals would go smoothly.