Circle of the Ancestors Read online

  These days, Rocky criticizes Sam for exploring the trails his ancestors walked and accuses him of chasing ghosts. But to Sam it is Rocky who is a ghost. A ghost of who he used to be.

  Sam leaves the darkened casino and squints in the bright sunshine. Little Bear waits next to Sam’s bike. He wags his tail as Sam approaches, rearranging the pine bark in the huge flower bed. Sam pets Little Bear and takes in deep breaths of fresh air to clear the headache he always gets from the casino. He wants to be as far away from that world as possible.

  Little Bear runs alongside as Sam rides through the parking lot full of out-of-state cars, from two or three states away. It is hard to believe people travel hundreds of miles to get there. The casino, however, holds the same attraction to Rocky. It is like a magnet turned on somewhere deep inside that refuses to let him go. The magnet inside Sam pulls in a totally different direction. It pulls him toward his ancestors and the past. Sam craves a different life than his father and mother. Somehow, his grandmother will show him the way to find it.

  CHAPTER 3: GRANDMOTHER

  Every year, Sam’s grandmother plants the Three Sisters––one row each of corn, beans, and squash––a staple of their tribe for centuries. Today, in her garden she stands almost hidden among the high corn, placing the plump husks in her large basket. Another smaller basket sits nearby, already full of tomatoes. When Sam arrives, she takes off her straw hat and embraces him. He is her height now. In the sunshine, she smells sweet and earthy.

  “Am I late?” Sam asks.

  “Not at all,” Grandmother says. She takes a calico handkerchief from her pocket and blots away a thin layer of sweat from her wrinkled forehead. Several bird feathers stick through the weaving of her hat. Birds that match the feathers flit nearby, the air thick with their songs. Spirit beings, his grandmother calls them. She collects two large, perfect red peppers and hands them to Sam. If old people can be best friends, she is his.

  “Where have you been?” Grandmother asks.

  “Nowhere,” he says, even though he knows lying to Grandmother never works.

  “You know it’s not your job to take care of Rocky,” she says.

  “Somebody has to.” Sam’s disappointment in his father tastes bitter in his mouth.

  Grandmother looks at him, as though choosing her words carefully. “Rocky has his own journey, Grandson. A journey that has nothing to do with you. Someday, he will find his way back to the old ways,” Grandmother says.

  Sam doesn’t feel that trusting.

  “As for you, Grandson. I have no doubt that you will make our tribe proud.”

  His face grows hot from his grandmother’s praise. It is his wish to make his tribe proud, although he has no idea how to accomplish this. After picking several yellow squash, he adds them to the basket. The craft of basket-making has passed through his family for generations. Sam often collects the cane, white oak, hickory bark, and honeysuckle she needs for her creations. He has learned how to weave baskets, too, but he isn’t as good as Grandmother. Nobody is.

  His sister Allie runs into the garden with her best friend, Beth. Her red sneakers are without shoestrings, as her long black hair gallops behind her.

  Her friend Beth is shy and often looks at the ground, especially whenever Sam is around.

  “Show her your knife, Sam,” Allie says.

  Grandmother hands Sam another basket of vegetables to put on the porch and smiles like she remembers being young, too. “You have a fan,” she says to Sam.

  Sam rolls his eyes, but he is pleased with the girls’ interest. He takes out his pocket knife and carefully opens the blade. Their eyes widen as they trade glances and giggles.

  “Now show her something you carved,” Allie says.

  After taking the small wooden bear from his pocket, Sam hands it to them. They carry the carved bear to the porch like it is a sacred object and then disappear into the house. Sam taught himself to carve during the long evenings he spent alone while his mom worked at the casino and Rocky gambled. Now Sam and his grandmother sit on the porch in the evenings, and he works on his carvings while she works on one of her quilts.

  Sam gathers string beans from the vines on the wooden frame as she picks over the ground for any remaining ripe squash. Her long white braid swishes across her back like a horse’s tail. In the side garden gourds lay on the ground attached to long vines. Grandmother uses the gourds as bird’s nests for the purple martins who defend the garden against crows and consume large quantities of insects. Bird feeders and gourds hang throughout the backyard like ornaments on Christmas trees.

  Along the far edge of their property are five white bee hive boxes. Bees fly in and out of the hives like the photographs Sam has seen of people in big cities coming and going from subways. Grandmother doesn’t need to wear a bee suit like other beekeepers. She says the bees never sting her because she sings to them. Every fall Sam helps her collect the honey, and every winter they move the queen bees to the bottom of the hives so they can survive the cold weather. So far, Sam hasn’t been stung either.

  “Do you want to take a hike tomorrow?” Sam asks her. “The mountain is calling me to climb it.” While he would never say this to Rocky, he doesn’t hesitate telling his grandmother. It is she who taught him that a mountain is sacred and has a spirit, just like all the plants and animals do. These spirits can call on people. Of course, people don’t always listen.

  “I promised Jeb Peabody a new order of baskets,” she says. A look crosses her face that hints at deeper reasons.

  The Cherokee museum is a few blocks away from the casino. Grandmother’s baskets are sold in the gift shop. The small museum honors their people from their creation story to the present day. It also tells the story of the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of his people from North Carolina to Oklahoma in the 1800s. It was called the Trail of Tears because many people died of starvation and exposure on the way. Just thinking about it makes Sam angry. White men created the Trail of Tears, as well as the casino. Is he the only person who can see the connection? But working in the garden soothes his disappointment.

  Sam offers to help Grandmother with her baskets. If not for her, Sam and Allie might still live in Rocky’s old Buick.

  Even though Sam and his grandmother have explored the trails since Sam was old enough to walk, she declines his offer. Does Sam have his own journey that has nothing to do with her? He doesn’t like this thought.

  Harvesting the produce in the garden is always a bigger job than he expects. Grandmother hums as she leans between her rows of leafy lettuce, picking the ones that are ripe and shaking the dirt from the roots. The contrast between the noise of the casino and Grandmother’s song is as wide as the ridge that towers above them.

  A song rises from his grandmother’s lips that is old like the mountains and rich like the earth beneath their feet. Words from the Cherokee language are peppered throughout the melody. Sam’s breathing deepens. Maybe the important things from his ancestors will live on after all.

  When she leans to pick up a new bird feather for her straw hat, the song stops. Yet Sam trusts it to emerge again just like the underground streams that trickle out of the side of the mountain. And just like Sam trusts that she will always be there for him.

  CHAPTER 4: THE DREAM

  Sam wakes early the next morning with a nagging in his gut. Looking outside, he expects to see dark clouds to fit his mood, but the sky is clear. He finds his grandmother making breakfast and he sits on a kitchen chair, hugging one of his knees to his chest. His feet are dirty from going barefoot. The images from the nightmare he had before waking make him shudder as he wipes the sweat still on his brow.

  “Did you have another dream?” she asks.

  He tells her of the vision, about how he stood face to face with a ferocious bear in the forest. Looking into the animal’s dark eyes, his heart pounded and he hadn’t known whether to run or fight. Several ancestors came to his side, including his grandfather. Sam has only seen photographs of
his grandfather, who died before Sam was born when Rocky was a boy himself.

  “In the dream, Grandfather encouraged me to be brave,” Sam tells her. “But there were others there, too, Grandmother. They were in tribal dress from hundreds of years ago. The ancestors created a sacred circle around me and wished me a safe passage. But there was something really scary about it. Like they weren’t all sure I would make it. You were there, too, Grandmother, standing with the ancestors.”

  A moment’s surprise registers on her face before she grows serious. She stares out the window into the distance. Something about the look on her face scares him even more than the dream.

  “What is it?” Sam asks. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing, Grandson,” she assures him, but her face looks like it belongs to someone who has received bad news. She continues to look out the window, as if peering into the center of a crystal ball.

  His grandmother grows quiet like this often. Sometimes she goes away for an entire afternoon and comes back full of secrets. She promises to teach him how to ride the waves of silence into the Spirit World. But for now, whenever he asks, she says he is too young and has to wait. It is dangerous territory for the uninitiated, she has said. Sam doesn’t even know what she means. What do her Spirit World trips have to do with an initiation?

  Learning patience is part of the waiting. He hates being patient. It is boring as crap. But he is willing to learn. On their hikes in the mountains she taught Sam how to become quiet and unmoving so the wildlife will forget he is there and show themselves. But this kind of patience he doesn’t mind: patience with a reward at the end.

  Grandmother’s seriousness passes and peacefulness returns. She looks at Sam as if just now noticing he is there. It is good to have her back.

  “Did they have any messages for me?” Sam asks. At times when Grandmother gets quiet she brings back wisdom from their ancestors.

  “The dream is your messenger,” Grandmother says. “Dreams are how the Creator speaks to us.” She breaks three eggs into a bowl to scramble.

  “Well, the Creator must speak in code,” Sam says.

  She nods that this is true and asks to hear more about the dream.

  Sam pauses to remember. “The bear charged after me,” he begins again. “He swiped my face with the tips of his claws. My skin ripped opened and blood trickled down my check. But then the bear disappeared into the forest, and I followed him. When I returned, if I returned, the ancestors were going to prepare a celebration.”

  “Bear energy is warrior energy,” she says. “Everything will work out, Grandson. You have found favor with the ancestors. They are looking out for you.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here today?” Sam asks.

  “No, the mountain spirit has called you,” Grandmother says. “This is something you must not ignore.”

  As she does ordinary things, his grandmother’s motions are slower and she is quieter than usual. She wraps a biscuit for him to take with him on his hike.

  “You’ll need this,” she says.

  She leans over and pets Little Bear like he has an important job to do and says, o-s-da gi-tli, which means good dog in their native Cherokee language. Little Bear’s tail beats against the kitchen floor.

  Then Grandmother turns back to Sam and holds his face in her warm hands for several seconds, as if memorizing how he looks. A lump of fear catches in Sam’s throat. She knows something she isn’t telling him. He wants to be a warrior like in the dream, but all of a sudden this possibility involves danger.

  Even after breakfast, his gut hammers at him like hunger. He wants his grandmother to tell him what it all means. But he already knows what she will say if he asks her. Life is a mystery that nobody fully understands, not even Grandmother. For now, Sam has to trust the unknown.

  CHAPTER 5: THE RED HAWK

  After grabbing his baseball cap hanging by the door, Sam walks down the dirt road in front of their house. Early morning dew covers the ground, capturing his footprints in the soil.

  The screen door slams behind him and Sam looks back to see Allie running. She catches up with Sam carrying a biscuit with Grandmother’s strawberry jam on top. “Can I come?” she asks. She hooks her arm into Sam’s and smiles up at him, revealing two new permanent front teeth growing in.

  “You don’t even know where I’m going,” Sam says.

  “Of course I do. You’re going up the mountain,” she says. Parts of her biscuit fall to the ground where Little Bear snatches them up.

  If Grandmother let Allie come that means he is worried about nothing.

  “There might be sticker bushes,” he tells Allie.

  She pauses. In the summer, Allie’s legs are covered with tiny cuts from playing in the woods around Grandmother’s house. “I don’t care,” she decides.

  “Okay, come on then. But I don’t want to hear any complaining if it gets too rough,” he says.

  In the distance, Grandmother walks from the house to her shed that serves as her workshop. If Sam wasn’t going on a hike, he would gather supplies for her basket-weaving. Is it his imagination or does Grandmother look worried? He wonders again if he should stay and help and forget about the mountain calling him. But something keeps pulling him forward.

  Allie finishes her biscuit and offers both hands for Little Bear to lick. They walk several seconds in silence.

  “Do you think we’ll see any bears?” she asks finally.

  “Probably not,” Sam says, thinking it odd that Allie brings up bears so soon after he dreamed about one. And since dreams speak in code, it is highly unlikely they will see a literal bear. Right? Besides, the bigger animals in the forest stay hidden during the day. “We may see a raccoon or two, and lots of squirrels and chipmunks,” Sam adds.

  “Can we bring one home?” Allie asks.

  “They belong in the wild, Allie.”

  “But I want a pet,” she says.

  Grandmother taught them never to feed wildlife or to try to keep them as pets because it disrupts the natural world the Cherokee people hold sacred.

  “Besides, you have Little Bear,” he says.

  “Little Bear is your dog. Everybody knows that,” she says.

  When the dirt road ends, Sam leads the way behind a large boulder marking the path to Jacob’s Ridge. The trail runs straight uphill from here, but the reward for the steady climb is a summit overlooking the entire valley of Rachel’s Pass. Sam has no idea who Rachel was, except she must have been very special to someone to have a valley named after her.

  After climbing only a few feet, Allie stops and asks how long the hike will take. When he answers truthfully that it might take several hours, she says she has changed her mind and wants to play at Beth’s instead.

  Before he has time to respond she turns to walk back down the hill.

  “Wait. Are you sure you can find your way back?” he calls after her.

  “I just follow the dirt road to Grandmother’s house,” she says.

  “Promise me you’ll go straight there and tell her that you’re going to Beth’s?”

  “Promise,” she says. “Have fun,” she calls, already out of sight.

  Little Bear looks at Sam as if to ask what’s going on.

  “It’s probably for the best,” he says. He can’t imagine Allie actually enjoying such a steep climb. Did Grandmother know all along that Allie wouldn’t go through with it?

  When Sam and Little Bear reach the grassy summit, he studies the familiar landmarks of Rachel’s Pass. A small vein of smoke rises from his grandmother’s house.

  Sam has lived his entire life in Rachel’s Pass. His ancestors traveled south over the mountains to settle here in the late 1600s. The land is rich with trails and old logging roads crisscrossing different parts of the mountain. Grandmother introduced Sam to the same paths she explored as a girl with her father, Sam’s great-grandfather, Great Elk, who had been a tribal council chief. He was the last known warrior in their family
.

  When Sam first sees the red hawk it occurs to him that he will have good luck today. He likes good luck, although he doesn’t seem to have much of it these days. At the edge of the summit, Sam bows to the four directions, as Grandmother taught him. It doesn’t occur to him that less than an hour later the bird he thinks is good luck will cause him to nearly lose his life.

  CHAPTER 6: BURIED TREASURE

  Present Day

  The fall down the mountain disorients him. Sam uses Little Bear to lean against as he pulls himself to his feet. At first his legs shake, but then he steadies himself. “The ancestors must have watched out for me,” Sam says to Little Bear. “Otherwise, I’d be with them right now.”

  Little Bear licks his hand as if relieved.

  Covered in cuts and scrapes and in pain, Sam climbs over the roots of an old oak that erupt from the ground like giant, half-buried arms. Thick, they anchor the tree’s ancient trunk to the ground. It is a magnificent tree, now that he has time to look at it. Perhaps the most splendid tree Sam has ever seen. The trunk is nearly as wide as he is tall. An elder in its tribe, it has watched the forest grow up around it. From above, the nearby stream looked like a tiny ribbon of light, but from here it is too wide to cross and runs high after the spring rains a few weeks ago.

  “High water’s been here,” Sam says to Little Bear, pointing to a silt line along the oak’s base.

  Uninterested, Little Bear sniffs a ladybug on one of the roots.

  “This oak is really old,” Sam continues. “Did you know our mountains are the oldest on earth?” He’s not sure why he needs to give Little Bear a history lesson, except it takes his mind off the fact that he nearly killed himself a few moments before.

  Little Bear pants, his mouth open in a wide smile. The day is heating up. “If only you could understand me,” Sam says. He rubs Little Bear’s ears, wishing his dog were fluent in more than barks, nudges and licks. But in their own way they communicate.