hypocritical: I was far more an outsider than Sara, and I’d been kd Iges, too. responsible in some fashion for these deaths. They fully deserved to handle and respect their dead without my interference, even if some of the dead had been important to me, too. I backed up the holler a ways, wondering if I could find my way to the trail Aidan and Ada had planned to take out of here. Given that I’d just sworn I’d get lost the moment I left the holler, I figured I should wait until the valley cleared and I could fight my way back down through the trees, the way Sara and I had come. I expected her to ride away in the helicopters, and she did.
Only after the choppers were gone and the sounds of their blades had faded did people begin to move out. Slowly, in small groups that supported each other and chose not to look at me. I could have followed them, but watched them go instead, even Ada and Aidan, the former of whom had the grace to glance toward me in invitation. I shook my head and she went along with the others, until I was alone in a mountain holler with the sun fading fast on the western horizon.
In a world with a proper sense of drama or mystical nonsense, the ghost of my father would no doubt have come slowly down the hills as the sun disappeared. I was just as glad the world wasn’t inclined toward that kind of theatrics, since I really didn’t want Dad to be dead. I did, though, sort of want... something. Some kind of connection to the land, I guessed. Something that said, “It’s okay, Jo. You belong here, too. The ghosts of your ancestors welcome you home,” or something to that effect.
What I got was a slight chill as a breeze picked up, and a greater awareness that late March was maybe the perfect time of year in the Qualla. Summer’s mugginess hadn’t come on full yet, nor were the bugs out in full force. Though I’d been serious about the likelihood of getting lost if sent out here alone, I’d also spent quite a bit of time in the mountains, especially after the twins had been born and I’d thoroughly branded myself an outsider and a loser. Then I went to college in Seattle, and while the Pacific Northwest was covered in forests, I’d stayed out of them. Only in the past year had I gotten back to the outdoors at all, and it had reminded me how much I’d liked being part of the world in that way. But the Northwest’s trees were nothing like down here in the Appalachians, and these were the ones that made my heart sing with familiarity. I wanted to curl up beneath them and pull a blanket of leaves over myself so I could sleep in the land and belong again.
Except I couldn’t, because there were seven dead people on their way home, and I had to first pay my respects, then go find what had killed them and stop it. I swayed a little, preparing myself for motion, but as the stars began to appear, crickets started singing, and some of the night wildlife began rustling through the underbrush. I closed my eyes, feeling raccoons and possums and shrews scrambling through the woods, and got a far-off sense of a puma who wasn’t supposed to be there any more than I was. Deer were settling down for the night, and there were individual human settlements still awake and pulsing with energy here and there amongst the hollers and hills. The road wasn’t so far away I couldn’t hear it over night’s quiet, and there was a steady stream of traffic. I imagined most of it was heading down the mountains into Cherokee as more and more people learned of the deaths.
I thought maybe Les Senior would be presiding over the vigil tonight, no doubt feeling his own near miss keenly. I wondered, had my own father not gone missing, if he might have been the shaman most qualified to perform death rites. There was so much about my own family that I didn’t know, and standing out here on a mountain was not going to teach me any of it.
I k sihe Norstayed there anyway, until it was fully dark and the likelihood of me snagging
Only after the choppers were gone and the sounds of their blades had faded did people begin to move out. Slowly, in small groups that supported each other and chose not to look at me. I could have followed them, but watched them go instead, even Ada and Aidan, the former of whom had the grace to glance toward me in invitation. I shook my head and she went along with the others, until I was alone in a mountain holler with the sun fading fast on the western horizon.
In a world with a proper sense of drama or mystical nonsense, the ghost of my father would no doubt have come slowly down the hills as the sun disappeared. I was just as glad the world wasn’t inclined toward that kind of theatrics, since I really didn’t want Dad to be dead. I did, though, sort of want... something. Some kind of connection to the land, I guessed. Something that said, “It’s okay, Jo. You belong here, too. The ghosts of your ancestors welcome you home,” or something to that effect.
What I got was a slight chill as a breeze picked up, and a greater awareness that late March was maybe the perfect time of year in the Qualla. Summer’s mugginess hadn’t come on full yet, nor were the bugs out in full force. Though I’d been serious about the likelihood of getting lost if sent out here alone, I’d also spent quite a bit of time in the mountains, especially after the twins had been born and I’d thoroughly branded myself an outsider and a loser. Then I went to college in Seattle, and while the Pacific Northwest was covered in forests, I’d stayed out of them. Only in the past year had I gotten back to the outdoors at all, and it had reminded me how much I’d liked being part of the world in that way. But the Northwest’s trees were nothing like down here in the Appalachians, and these were the ones that made my heart sing with familiarity. I wanted to curl up beneath them and pull a blanket of leaves over myself so I could sleep in the land and belong again.
Except I couldn’t, because there were seven dead people on their way home, and I had to first pay my respects, then go find what had killed them and stop it. I swayed a little, preparing myself for motion, but as the stars began to appear, crickets started singing, and some of the night wildlife began rustling through the underbrush. I closed my eyes, feeling raccoons and possums and shrews scrambling through the woods, and got a far-off sense of a puma who wasn’t supposed to be there any more than I was. Deer were settling down for the night, and there were individual human settlements still awake and pulsing with energy here and there amongst the hollers and hills. The road wasn’t so far away I couldn’t hear it over night’s quiet, and there was a steady stream of traffic. I imagined most of it was heading down the mountains into Cherokee as more and more people learned of the deaths.
I thought maybe Les Senior would be presiding over the vigil tonight, no doubt feeling his own near miss keenly. I wondered, had my own father not gone missing, if he might have been the shaman most qualified to perform death rites. There was so much about my own family that I didn’t know, and standing out here on a mountain was not going to teach me any of it.
I k sihe Norstayed there anyway, until it was fully dark and the likelihood of me snagging
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