The Revenant (22 page)

Chapter 32

F
OR A MOMENT
, I
BASKED IN THE WARMTH
of his touch, the glow of those words. Then a darker thought chilled me. “But I’m not Cherokee.”

“That is a defect, but I’ll try not to hold it against you.” He smiled. “I’m not so traditional that I believe Cherokee should only marry Cherokee. I am not full-blood, after all.”

I stared at him. “Oh, stand up. I feel foolish with you kneeling before me.” He obliged, pulling me to him for another kiss, but I held him off. “You said I could play a part in helping your people. What use would I be?”

“You could teach.”

I bit my lip. “Miss Crenshaw would never have me back.”

“Who said anything about Miss Crenshaw? The female seminary is a fine school, but best suited to girls with money and progressive ideals. Most rural families can’t afford to send their children away to a boarding school, even when the Cherokee Nation pays their tuition. And these families don’t want their children to become strangers. We need schools that encourage children to keep their Cherokee language and traditions. You could teach at such a school. And someday you might train others to teach.” He paused, frowning. “Everything is changing so fast. There’s talk of the territory becoming a state, and the U.S. government parceling out the land that the Cherokee have held in common since the removal. We have a fight on our hands, Willie.”

“You’ve thought a lot about this.”

He laughed. “It’s been a long summer.”

I thought of myself in a schoolroom with girls like Lucy and Mae who were fierce, smart, and weary of being teased for their brown skin and country ways—girls who didn’t want to trade their language and traditions for a good education.

“Will you give me your answer, Willie?”

I looked up at him. “You want me to come with you now?”

“Today, this very minute. I want you to pack a bag and walk with me to town. We’ll catch the train to Nashville.” He smiled. “I’ll put it to your stepfather and mother, so it’s all aboveboard. I can be very persuasive, you know.”

Oh, how I wanted to be with him. The thought of him walking away without me was like contemplating the loss of a limb, or the possibility I’d never be warm again. More than one untoward thought entered my head as I imagined us free to show our affection for each other, no one frowning at the idea of Eli courting me.

But then I heard my mother’s voice in my head, telling me that my impatience was overruling my good sense. That I was running away yet again. And Miss Crenshaw? She would speak of responsibility to family. I thought of the lessons with my brothers and how much progress we made each day. And little Christabel, who was sitting up and would be crawling soon. Before long, she’d take her first unsteady steps. Who would be there to catch her? To kiss her knees when she scraped them?

“I can’t.”

He took a step back. “I thought you wanted to be with me.”

“I do, Eli. I love you most dreadfully.”

His frown softened slightly. “Well, then why not come away with me? Is it … because I’m Indian?”

“No! It’s not that at all.” I clutched his arm and pulled him close again. “A minute ago,
I
was worried about not being Cherokee, you idiot.” I put my hand to his cheek, smoothing the hard line of his jaw. “I made a promise to my mother—a promise that I would help at home for a year.”

“But I’m sure she would understand and be happy for you.”

I dropped my hand, frowning. “I lied and thieved to get away from this farm, to avoid my responsibilities. I need to put in my time. I
want
to put in my time.”

“That sounds like penance. Why should you have to suffer?”

“It’s not penance. Not really. My mother needs me. I have two little brothers and a baby sister—they need me too. I can’t leave them … again. Not when we’ve just started to feel like a family. Perhaps next fall I can think about myself again.”

He held my gaze. Finally, he nodded. “I understand … and I do admire you for it.” He wove his fingers through mine, tightening his grip. “How do you manage it?”

“Manage what?”

“Make me love you even more by telling me we can’t be together?”

I squeezed his hand. “We are still so young, Eli. After teaching almost a year at the seminary, I felt
old
and worn out. But I am only eighteen. I think … I have some growing up to do.” I smiled. “I hope you’ll still find me fascinating when I’m more ‘seasoned,’ as Miss Crenshaw would say.”

He sighed. “I suppose it was selfish of me to try whisking you away. I’ve been anxious about leaving home to attend university. It seemed more like an adventure if you were beside me.” His mouth curved into a sad smile. “But we
will
be together, won’t we?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll write to me?”

I put my hand to his cheek once again. “Only if you promise to visit as often as you can.”

“I’ll be knocking on your door every chance I get. In fact, I’ll keep knocking until you finally agree to come away with me.”

“I’m counting on that,” I whispered.

Then he pulled me into his arms again, and I left off the thinking and worrying. Instead, I let my body memorize the softness of his lips, the pressure of his arms wrapped around me and his body pressed to mine. My skin breathed him in, receiving his imprint like a brand scorched on flesh.

I could live a year for others.
This
was for me.

That night, after I’d put the twins to bed and watched them fall asleep, I sat in the rocking chair and closed my eyes. In my mind I saw the bookshelves full of Papa’s favorite plays and novels, the floor littered with the scripts he was always consulting, revising, or criticizing as nothing better than kindling for the fire. I saw the whorl of pipe smoke rising in the air, the scent of it acrid and sweet at the same time. The smell of whiskey had been one of many comforting scents associated with Papa, but now I did not try to recall it. That whiskey had driven my mother to despair and had proved his undoing.

So I sat and remembered my papa’s passion for words, his tales of fame on the stage, his dreams of a gentlemanly retirement with an adoring wife and a daughter who, with proper schooling, would catch a fine husband. He’d been a dreamer rather than a doer—hell for my mother, but I saw too much of myself in Papa not to forgive him that.

I thought of all Papa’s good qualities, meditating upon all the moments we spent together, drenching myself in memories. It was like holding my very own séance. I was channeling my father’s spirit—I could almost feel him in the room, see him sitting in his chair by the fire, looking up from a book to smile, or to read some wondrous or preposterous passage to me.

I opened my eyes. “Papa?” I whispered. “Are you here with me?”

Aside from the deep breathing of my brothers, there was only silence. I felt no tingle on the back of my neck, no prickling of gooseflesh on my arms. No tortured spirit chilled the room with its ache for vengeance. It was only me, two snoring boys, and my memories.

And that was enough.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

The Revenant
is a work of fiction, but the setting was very real. Early in the nineteenth century, President Andrew Jackson pressured the Cherokee Nation to relocate from Georgia to what is now northeastern Oklahoma. A small group of wealthy Cherokee, seeing removal as inevitable, signed a treaty agreeing to sell all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi in return for a large tract of land in Indian Territory. But the majority of Cherokee, who never agreed to this treaty and considered it illegal, were forcibly removed, along with other tribes, as part of a devastating migration often referred to as the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee Nation proved resilient, however, and ultimately established a flourishing capital in Tahlequah. The Cherokee National Female Seminary (as it is officially called) opened in 1851, remaining in operation until 1909. The original seminary building burned down in 1887, but the subsequent building, completed in 1889, still stands as the historic centerpiece of the Northeastern State University campus.

The seminary was a fascinating place—every bit the high-powered educational enterprise Miss Crenshaw represents it to be. And because the school accepted students from various socioeconomic backgrounds and with varying quantities of Cherokee blood (sometimes as little as 1/128 Cherokee), it did feature many of the conflicts dramatized in
The Revenant
.

In developing the story, I made great use of
Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909
, by Devon A. Mihesuah. Dr. Mihesuah, currently a professor in the University of Kansas’s Department of Global Indigenous Nations Studies, noted a tension between darker-skinned full-blood Cherokee girls and the lighter-skinned mixed-blood girls—with the latter considering themselves more “progressive” than their “traditional” counterparts. However, upon speaking with Dr. Richard Allen, policy analyst for the Cherokee Nation, I learned that many Cherokee scholars feel this tension was less about race and more about class and family background—that cliques arose among the wealthier town girls, who may have found the country girls rather rustic. Either way, factions developed, just as they still do in modern schools. I did my best to explore this in a way that was both honest and sensitive.

Many of the characters and situations in the book were inspired by real people and events. Harriet Crenshaw is loosely based upon the school’s legendary principal of twenty-six years, Florence Wilson. The primaries
were
housed on the third floor (with older full-bloods educated alongside younger mixed-bloods), and according to the memoirs of seminary graduates, they did stage unofficial performances there. Boys from the male seminary often did serenade the girls at night, and Tahlequah truly did have an opera house, where school plays, debates, and oratory contests were staged. Even Fannie’s warrior dance—so offensive to Eli Sevenstar and others—was inspired by an 1894 photograph of female seminary students wearing feathered headdresses and holding bows and arrows. All Cherokee names were mixed and matched from lists of students and alumni found in male and female seminary catalogs.

Researching the background for this book was an engaging and eye-opening experience, and I was fortunate to have access to a gold mine of primary resources at the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Northeastern State University Archives and Special Collections. As alluded to above, I consulted photographs, school catalogs, newspaper clippings, and oral histories, along with published histories of the Cherokee people and the seminary. These sources helped tremendously in fleshing out the context within which my fictional murders and hauntings occurred. In addition to writing what I hoped would be an entertaining mystery, I endeavored to honor the Cherokees’ pride in their thriving nation. I hope Willie’s growing appreciation of her surroundings, as well as her deepening respect for her Cherokee colleagues, friends, and students, adequately reflects this endeavor.

Finally, legends of a ghost at the Cherokee National Female Seminary continue to this day, though no one can say for sure whether the building really is haunted, and if so, by whom.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people deserve recognition for helping me bring this novel to publication. My editor, Michelle Frey, proved a keen critic and kindred spirit as we revised the manuscript, and I am forever grateful to her, Michele Burke, and the entire team at Knopf. (Special thanks go to the art department for the fabulous cover.) My agent, Jennifer Laughran, is to be commended for her shrewd commentary on early drafts, as well as her incredible children’s book knowledge and business savvy. I owe heartfelt thanks to Vickie Sheffler and Brenda Cochran at the Northeastern State University Archives, as well as Delores Sumner at NSU Special Collections, for their generous assistance with primary resources. Brandi Barnett and Martha Bryant, critique buddies and Tahlequah residents, read the ugly first draft and saw some merit in it—to say their feedback was much appreciated is a massive understatement. Diane Bailey, Michelle Lunsford, Lisa Mason, L. K. Madigan, and Richard Allen also read versions of the full draft and provided invaluable input. My wonderful critique group members offered insights (and many laughs) along the way—Lisa Marotta, Kelly Bristow, Dee Dee Chumley, and Shel Harrington. My friends on LiveJournal generously offered feedback to strange questions on terminology and other historical minutiae; I’m particularly grateful to Ellen Maher and Edith Cohn for suggestions that inspired the novel’s tagline. This novel owes a great deal to all the teachers and students who taught me so much over the years, and I especially wish to thank Michael Shapiro for being a brilliant Shakespeare professor and supportive friend (Willie would have taken ALL your classes, Michael!). Of course, none of this would have been possible if Mom hadn’t made a passionate, lifelong reader out of me, or if Dad hadn’t pushed me to love learning for its own sake. I owe so much to my entire family—grandparents, parents, stepparents, parents-in-law, brothers, sisters, and my little nieces—for loving me and making me a better person. (I’m still working on the better-person part, so keep after me, you guys.) I probably should thank my cat for endeavoring so frequently to sit on me as I worked, thus keeping my bum in the chair. And saving the best for last—I thank my husband, Steve, for his faith in me, his endless support, and his shrewd insights as I wrote and revised (and revised, and revised) this manuscript. Steve, you are a better partner than I ever could have wished for, far better than I deserve, and I adore you.