Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
The graves took all night to dig. There were seven in all, each between five and six feet deep, dug by a dozen pairs of hands. Some of the diggers brought gloves, and they took turns sharing them with those who had not so as to try to keep their hands from breaking. By the end, every hand was blistered and burning just the same. Their fingers hurt to straighten. Their backs bent crooked as laurel.
It was the middle of summer, but on the mountain the air was cool. Each time they swapped out of the graves to rest, their sweat chilled their bodies and they welcomed that feeling, for the work had nearly set them afire. Katydids wailed from the trees and it was that sound that dampened the chomp and clink of spades digging away at the earth, the labored breaths of those who drove their shovels deeper.
Around midnight, campus police circled the parking lot once making their rounds, but the diggers hid and were soon alone. The dirt rose mounded at the heads of the graves, and when the digging was done they shuttled back and forth from pickup trucks to carry buckets filled with river stones.
The young woman who'd planned this took the last of the work alone. She'd painted the river stones white and with them she slowly formed letters on the mounds of clay at the head of each grave. She took her time with this part, as if it were some sort of meditation. Holding each rock with both hands, she slowly turned them until they seemed to show her their place, and when the last was set, a word was spelled. Even in the blue glow she could read what was written, and with it finished she stretched flat on the grass to watch the last of pinprick stars dim and fade as first light blanched the sky.
Early on, she'd considered stretching black sheets over the ground to signify the open graves. But now that the work was done and her body ached, she was glad she had taken the tougher row. This was part of the story and now she knew the details intimately. She rocked forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. Red mud was caked to the legs of her overalls. She could feel the clay dried like a charcoal mask against her face where she'd wiped away sweat with the backs of her hands. She grinned and slowly closed her eyes, satisfied with what they'd accomplished.
When the first birds started to call, the people who'd helped her began to leave. All of them were White save her, and some shook her hand while others hugged her neck. A young man named Brad Roberts was the last to go. He was a graduate student at the school and had been a tremendous help all summer with everything she was doing. Over the last two months, they'd spent time together nearly every day. He walked over and stood by her side. "It's powerful," he said, placing one hand gently at the back of her arm. "It really is, Toya." His words filled her with pride. Once he was gone and she was alone, she slipped a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket. She opened the paper to a black-and-white photograph she'd printed at the library.
In the picture, nineteen men and women were gathered in front of a church. Most of the men wore mustaches and all of the women wore hats, every person dressed in their Sunday best. Her third-great-grandfather stood in the second row with his hand in his pocket, something she could tell because of the way his jacket angled across the waist of his slacks. He was tall and lean with a low brow that shaded his eyes, light-skinned compared to his wife, who stood beside him. Her third-great-grandmother had a white knitted shawl draped over her shoulders, a wide-brimmed black hat propped high on her head. In the woman's face, the girl could see her mother, traits that had carried down and were still traveling.
As she stood there studying the faces in the photograph, the faces of where and whom she'd come from, she couldn't help feeling like they were watching her, their flat stares reaching somewhere far back inside her. It was as if there were a closet at the back of her heart and that image, coupled with the smell of the dirt, had somehow opened a door she had not known lay closed.
She folded the photograph and slid it back into her pocket, then walked across the courtyard to a sidewalk by the road. A small bronze plaque had been placed there long ago to dedicate the ground, and it was this plaque that had led to this. Over the course of the summer, she'd stood here dozens of times and read what was written until the lines were memorized.
On this site in 1892 eleven former slaves founded the Cullowhee African Methodist Episcopal
Zion Church. The congregation, church and cemetery moved in November 1929 to make room for the construction of Robertson Hall.
The plaque, of course, did not tell the story. In truth there were eighty-six bodies and an amputated arm exhumed and reburied. When she'd asked her grandmother about what had happened, her grandmother had said that as a child she'd been told that when they dug up the bodies, the hair of the dead had kept growing, a grisly detail she didn't know whether to believe or dismiss as some scary story intended to frighten children. Looking back, her grandmother thought it was most likely true. Her voice had trembled as she said this.
In a whole lot of ways, the young woman thought, pain had been passed down from one generation to the next, and that's what so many people never could understand unless it was their history, unless this was their story. For certain groups in America, trauma was a sort of inheritance.
The young woman turned from the plaque to the three-story building that stood in place of the church, the red brick walls warming in color as sunlight started to reach them. The courtyard and graves still rested in shade from a tall hedgerow of pines, and she walked with her hands locked together at her chest for one last look before going. The stones were brighter now and under her breath she read what they spelled aloud.
In the beginning, there was only the word.
Chapter 2
That same night, seven miles down the road, the scene looked like a faded postcard from forty years ago. An '84 Caprice Classic wagon sat in the nightglow outside Harold's Supermarket. Harold's had been right there on that short stretch of road between Sylva and Dillsboro since the early seventies and never much changed its look. The parking lot was empty except for the Chevrolet. Streetlights filtered through the fog and shone off the blacktop to make the lot appear a solid sheet of dark blue glass.
A clerk working alone at the gas station across the road made the call. She said the first two times the man walked into the How Convenient he grabbed three tallboys of Busch Ice and paid cash. There was about an hour between each visit, another hour or so before he stumbled into the store for a third time. That last visit he gathered another three cans, emptied his pockets, and counted out a fistful of change. He wound up sixty cents shy and tripped toward the beer cooler to trade the tallboys for a forty-ounce High Life. There was just enough left over for a couple loose cigarettes from a foam cup next to the register.
None of this of course was all that odd. A girl works graveyard at a filling station that sells more booze than petrol and she comes to see all sorts of folks waltz through that door. If it had been one of the usuals she wouldn't have batted an eye. But the thing was, she didn't know this man from Adam, and in a place like this a girl like her came to know every drunk in town. She took a smoke break after sweeping the store. Leaning against the wall by the stacks of five-dollar firewood outside, she could see the man across the street sprawled on the hood of his car cussing at the sky in front of Harold's.
Deputy Ernie Allison had been working nights all month for the Jackson County Sheriff's Office. Harold's fell within Sylva limits and was town police jurisdiction, but budget cuts had the Sylva PD low on patrol and Ernie wasn't doing much anyway. Tuesday nights were always dead shifts.
Town police were already on scene when he arrived, a single patrol car at the far side of the parking lot. Ernie cut his headlights as he veered through the empty spaces at an angle. He yawned and rubbed the heel of his right hand into his eyes, trying to shake himself awake. Running his palm from his forehead through his hair, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. His hair was trimmed low, his green eyes glassy and tired. As he pulled beside the cruiser, he lowered his window and looked across at a familiar face. Tim McMahan and Ernie had graduated in the same high school class.
Ever since they were kids, McMahan had been a drag. When they were seniors in high school, Tim ratted out the baseball team for getting stoned in the dugout after games. To this day, Ernie would've dreaded Tim's sidling up beside him at the bar, dreaded the drawn-out conversation, the you'll-never-guess-who-I-ran-intos, but despite all that Tim was decent police.
"You seen anybody?"
"Yeah, he's passed out in the back of that dinosaur." Tim motioned toward the station wagon that was parked in front of the store. The car was dark green with faded wood paneling and a crack running straight across the back glass.
"You try waking him up?"
"Figured I'd wait on you once I heard you check en route."
"I was bored stupid," Ernie said. "Couldn't hardly keep my eyes open."
Tim chuckled and smiled. "I bet I'd been asleep an hour." He grabbed an empty Mountain Dew from the cup holder and spit a dark line of snuff inside the bottle. "Radio went off I was watching the backs of my eyelids. I appreciate the backup."
"Not a problem."
The two cruisers crept side by side across the parking lot, one pulling tight to the back bumper of the Caprice while the other swung around to box the car in. Ernie stepped out and situated his belt on his hips. His legs were cramped from being in the car all night and he pushed up onto his tiptoes a few times to stretch his calves. Tim took the driver's side and Ernie the opposite, each sweeping his flashlight across the interior as they peered through smudged windows.
The rear seat was folded down and the entire back of the car was swamped with clothes. The man was shirtless and barefooted, lying flat on his stomach with a pair of black denim jeans painted to his legs. He had a black leather jacket wadded up and was hugging the coat with both arms under his head for a pillow.
Ernie glanced over top of the Caprice to see if Tim was ready. Tim took a step back, dug the wad of Skoal from his cheek, and tossed the tobacco into the parking lot. Turning his attention to the car, he rapped three loud cracks against the window with the head of the flashlight. The man didn't move at first but Tim pounded the glass again with his fist and the man groggily opened his eyes.
Ernie angled his flashlight straight into the man's face and he perked up on one elbow and squinted at the light, his face scrunched and puzzled. The man reached out and pressed one hand flush against the side glass to block the flashlight's beam.
"What the hell are you doing out there? Just who the hell are you?" He spoke with a funny accent, some sort of drawl from a deeper South.
"Jackson County Sheriff's Office," Ernie said. "I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle."
All of a sudden the man whipped around and dug under the pile of clothes, and just as soon as he made that move Ernie drew his service weapon as Tim yanked open the far side door. Tim wrestled the man out of the car by his ankles and onto the ground where Ernie couldn't see from where he stood. There was a short commotion, two men grunting and snorting, then the ratcheted click of cuffs clinking closed. By the time Ernie made it around the vehicle Tim had the man on his feet.
"What in the hell you doing me like that for? I ain't done nothing!"
"What were you reaching for under those clothes?"
"My billfold, you son of a bitch. My license is in my billfold."
Ernie leaned into the car and pushed the leather jacket aside. Sure enough, a cheap nylon wallet was hidden under the jacket. Ripping the Velcro open, Ernie removed a Mississippi driver's license and studied the picture. William Dean Cawthorn had a head too small for his body, a long pencil neck, and a greasy mullet that lapped at his shoulders. Ernie tilted the license back and forth under his flashlight to check the hologram.
"You're a long way from Mississippi, Mr. Cawthorn." He walked around to the front of the station wagon and tossed the open wallet onto the hood. "What exactly are you doing in Sylva?"
The man stood up straight and shifted from foot to foot while Tim patted him down. He was tall and lean with broad shoulders. He jerked his head to the side and spit through the gap between his teeth. His torso was milky white, his arms and face sun beaten dark as leather. Road dust and dirt speckled his chest from where he'd wallowed across the blacktop.
"Tell me, why the hell you drug me out of that car like that? That fellow behind me about cracked my goddamn head open. Why don't you tell me what the hell for?"
"We both saw you reach under those clothes."
"I told you it was my billfold."
"But how were we supposed to know that?"
"Ahhhhh," he grumbled, and spit again off to the side.
The man kept trying to turn so he could get a better look at the officer patting him down. A couple tiny symbols were inked on his neck and arm like stick-on tattoos-a shamrock on the side of his throat, a crooked swastika centered on his right shoulder. He had bright blue eyes and brown hair, looked scruffy and unkempt. All of his facial features were mashed together, wide eyes sunk behind a nose that had obviously been broken, his mouth crammed under that beak like there wasn't a tooth in his head.
When Tim was finished searching the man’s person he stepped around him and checked the license Ernie had tossed on the hood.
"All right, Mr. Cawthorn, I’m placing you under arrest."
"Arrest!" he squawked. "What the hell for?"
"Drunk in public. Vagrancy."
"Vagrant! I ain’t no vagrant! I run out of gas and didn’t have no place to go. Had a couple beers too fast and was sleeping it off. That’s all. For Christ’s sake, you going to arrest a man for sleeping it off?"
Tim began leading the man to his patrol car behind the Caprice. They were somewhere right around the rear tire when that long-legged son of a bitch spun around and kicked Tim square in the knee. After that it was off to the races.
The cuffs holding the man’s arms behind his back kept him hunched forward as he sprinted across the parking lot barefooted. Ernie was on him in no time. He’d run the football all-state in high school and was still stocky and quick as a boar. He tackled the man from behind and rode him a few feet across the asphalt. Before Ernie could push himself up, Tim had his knee in the back of Cawthorn’s neck, pressing his face into the blacktop. The man fought for a second or two, wrenching his body in every direction he could, but after that last burst Ernie felt him just sort of collapse and go limp. The man smelled like sweat and beer. He lay there spent and laughing.
"I just about had you," he said. He coughed and struggled to catch his breath. "Five more feet and I’d have had you."
"Five more feet and that Taser would’ve been pulsing fifty thousand volts. That’s what five more feet would’ve got you." Ernie climbed to his feet and helped Tim lift the man from the ground by his elbows. Cawthorn was a good foot taller than Ernie and had five inches or so on Tim.
"You think a thing like that scares me?" The man’s mouth was busted and there was blood dripping from his bottom lip as he smiled. Road rash reddened his chest and stomach where Ernie’d tackled him, the scrapes just starting to bleed. A long scratch ran from his hairline down the side of his face. "You think I ain’t ever been tased? I’m from by-God Mississippi! Fifty thousand volts just gives us a hard-on!"
The man didn’t shut up for one second as they led him to the back of Tim’s patrol car and shoved him inside. Afterward, they stood there catching their breath and stared at each other, amused.
"Got a mouth on him, don’t he?"
"And stretched out like the month’s groceries."
"You all right?" Ernie asked.
"Yeah, I’ll be fine," Tim said. "Kicked me in the shin like a little kid."
"Like that Charlie Daniels song." Ernie laughed and shook his head as they walked back to the Caprice. They still needed to search the car.
