Chapter 34

The knock on the door startled Lily. No one had passed since before Anna died. Roads had been too bad, the snow too deep. She edged toward the door. “What’d you want?” she said.

A second knock pushed Lily back. She held her breath, waiting for an answer. “I’m not opening the door till I know who you are,” she said, trying to steady the tremor in her voice.

A man’s deep voice answered, “Briar Slocomb.”

Lily whirled around, looking for a possible weapon. She had seen Briar Slocomb passing day after day over the years, but he had never stopped or even lifted a hand in greeting.

“Be still.” Her pin’s angel spoke in her ear. “He’s done nothing to make you afraid.” Ena’s voice surprised her. It was when Ena spoke that she recalled weaving the pin into her collar each morning as she dressed.

She took a butcher knife from the table. “Don’t be childish,” Ena said. “Put the knife back. Don’t let him in. Don’t let him know your mama’s dead.” Lily began to put the knife away, but instead she dropped it into her pocket.

Tall Corn had come to Briar in a dream. He walked out of lush mountain shrubs, dressed as he had been on his deathbed. He carried the hatchet Briar wore on his belt.

“I hacked my way through trees and budding rhododendron to find you,” Tall Corn said.

“I’ve been right here.” Briar gawked at Tall Corn. He was scratched and bleeding from his journey. “It’s winter. There are no buds.”

“It’s a long, long journey,” Tall Corn said.

“How did you take my hatchet?”

“What is mine is yours. What is yours is mine,” Tall Corn said. “We all are akin.”

Briar looked at his mother who sipped her coffee, her arm propped on the table. She didn’t respond.

“It is time for you to gather your harvest,” he said.

“I told you that I don’t have a harvest.”

“You do.” Tall Corn smiled. “It fell from the tree. It weathers on the ground. It lies under moldering leaves.”

“Why do you give me a puzzle?”

“You must stand for something. Make yourself known as a man.” Tall Corn rubbed the nape of his neck. “I have slashed through undergrowth to say to you that you must choose between the white man who sired you and the Cherokee who raised you.”

“What do you mean, white man?” Briar felt his brow furrow.

“Your beloved mother can tell you.” The shadow of Tall Corn walked like a phantom through the brush. A limb from Old Oak popped and fell to the ground. Though Old Oak was at the top of the rise, Briar heard the break. In the distance, Tall Corn leapt upon a muscular black bear. The two glowed with stardust as they soared across an ebony sky.

At dawn when Briar awoke, he opened the door to his mother’s church without knocking and sat down at her table.

That afternoon, Briar arrived at Boone Station. Speaking through the closed door, he said, “You got something of mine.”

“No, I don’t,” Lily argued.

“You do,” said Ena. He fluffed his robes from around his feet and sat down on the pin’s head.

“What?” Lily whispered. Lily had imagined Briar a dirty man, but he was Kee Granny’s son. Kee Granny had not been dirty. He would be one whose breath puffed his long hair out of his face. But that was nonsense. He kept his hair tied at the nape of his neck with a string.

“You do,” said Slocomb.

Lily visualized him standing tall, pushing his chest out, he sounded so firm. “No, I don’t.”

“Listen to him,” said Ena.

“My animals. I give you a chance to return them. If you don’t give them to me, I’m taking them. I made them and they belong to me.” Briar pounded on the door again. “Open the door.”

“No. I found the animals. They’re mine.” Lily rubbed her eyes. So tired. She wondered when she had last slept. “I’m not opening the door. Go away.”

“You can’t get rid of me as easy as you did my mama.” Snow crunched under his feet as he stomped off the porch. “You’ll rue the day you made me come back,” he called.

“You must give them back,” said Ena. “You cannot take from a man unless he gifts it to you.”

Lily dropped on the bed. She had been light-headed since Briar’s first knock. A shiver ran down her back. She rose and pushed the bureau in front of the door so it could not be forced open if anyone broke the lock.

That night she slept with the light on. Powell Valley Electric had strung lines over Turtleback at least ten years ago in the early 1950s, when the state started grading and tending the dirt road that ran from Covington to Breakline Camp. Tonight she was glad. She dozed and awoke with each sound. When the sun topped the mountain ridge, she peeped out the window facing the porch. The animal carvings were still hanging over her mother’s coffin.

 

Sister Sun turns bright white. She has not seen an argument before where both are right. She slips behind a long, wispy cloud to think this thing through.

 

Before noon, Briar Slocomb again stood at Lily’s door. Lily saw him through the window. He stood, his legs splayed out. The questions on his brow made him look uncomfortable, as if he had lost power over his tongue. Lily slid back the chest and cracked the door. “Did you carve them?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Your mother told me the Little People made them.” She braced her foot against the door and folded her arms across her breast, daring him to contradict her. “They are wonderful.”

Briar’s flushed face and jutting chin told Lily that he had the same anger she had known against his mother. She had felt it grow within her from when she first realized Kee Granny had manipulated her into killing the trees surrounding the holy cedar. Briar’s anger was so tangible she looked away. When she looked back at Briar, he looked as if he had swallowed ground glass, his pain was so deep.

“My father…” He stammered and started again. “Tall Corn, the man I thought was my father, is gone. And at my hand.”

“What do…?” Lily began.

“Now you have my animals. Animals like those Tall Corn carved on his gunstock,” Briar said. “They are all I have of the man I called father.”

“I didn’t know,” Lily said.

“You can only have what is given you, not what you take,” said Ena.

“You’re right to take the animals,” Lily said. “I’ll miss them.” She closed and relocked the door. Sometime that day Briar Slocomb took the animals, leaving nothing behind but tracks in deep snow.