Laura Hunter - Beloved Mother

Copyright 2019 Laura Hunter & BluewaterPublications

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This work is based on the authors personalperspective and imagination.

Editor Sierra Tabor

Managing Editor Angela Broyles

Published by Bluewater Publications atSmashwords.

E-book ISBN:978-1-949711-09-7

Print perfect bound book:

ISBN:978-1-934610-98-5

Library of CongressControl Number: 2018957289

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For my mother, Margaret MastersBarton,

who taught me to love books and mountains

and my husband, Tom,

who taught me the value of love.

Contents

Chapter 1

Take warning how you court young men Mountain Ballad

The Foot of Turtleback Mountain

Legend had it that Mona Parsons could stir up dustdevils by spinning a stick in the dirt. She called up a stormwhenever farmers needed rain. She could twist a rain shower into aferocious tree-breaker if the farmer denied her pay and call itback thrice-fold with a nod of her head. Word had it she came intothe world dancing. The daughter of an established Parsons family inCovington, Virginia, born to a mother no more than eighteen and adaddy at least ten years older, she spent childhood evenings on thegrass, stomping dew into the earth as if she tried to awaken MotherNature herself.

Each night, her father called to her from behind hisunkempt beard to come inside. Not a deferring child, Mona glancedback at him, dashed through the gate and down the bank to BrokenRock Creek. Tiny, no larger than a wood sprite, she spent days onTurtleback Mountain gathering flowers and herbs and, some say,conjuring with wild beasts. Some days she came down the mountain,her hair filled with moss and sticks, looking like a disheveledelf, her lips and fingers blue from blackberries she had eaten offthe sides of ditches.

Had Mona then known of the communities of CherokeeLittle People, she would have sung out to the Laurel People toshare her joy on Turtleback Mountain. But she did not know. Shewould not know until Beloved Mother began Monas training.

More forward-minded neighbors told her parents theywere blessed. Such an open, creative child, they said.

Wild heathen, others whispered. A reed shaken bythe wind, some said. Cursed.

The Parsons accepted the latter, deemed themselvessteeped in hexes and bore no more children for four years. TheVirginia mining town of Covington watched and waited. A family whoowned an entire mountain could have access to mountain spirits, theold people intoned, and a child could breathe such spirits into hersoul unknowing. Those who wield the obvious can manipulate theunseen. Thats the Lords own truth, they vowed.

The summer Mona turned thirteen, an angular mansauntered into Covington as if he held the world in his backpocket. He carried a black valise and a hatchet swung from hisbelt. She first spied him at the base of the Lost Miners Monumentin the Square. Without speaking, she followed him about day afterday as if she had lost her power to the gleam in his eye. Folkslater said he must have cast a spell on her.

Her father belted her evenings when she came backhome, but still she slipped out the window before dawn. Before anyrooster could crow and when the river behind her house moved lazyand low, she was gone again, without thought of leaving her peoplebehind.

Early August, the man was seen leaving town at dusk.That night Monas bed lay empty. The town searched Covington forher. They scoured Turtleback Mountain for her. They went east toSpencers Mountain. They did not find her. They asked about for themans name, but no one could remember.

Some within Covington said the shadowy stranger wasSquire Dan Sparks from down round Cades Cove who had more landthan anybody ever had.

Some said he was Squires oldest boy who was untamedand a mite crazy.

Some who knew not the Cherokee said he was meant tobe a Cherokee medicine man but gave up and left for city ways.

Great Spirit and Sister Sun and Brother Moon laughso hard at such foolishness that Sister Sun forgets to leave thesky before Brother Moon appears in the east. Great Spirit has tosend her on her way.

Had the Cherokee been in the valley beneath thismountain, as they had been for generations prior, they would haveexplained that this Ama idnai, this Turtleback Mountain, wasGreat Spirits sacred place. He made it to specification before heever thought of making a man.

Here on Turtleback Mountain and in its shade stoodhemlock and oak with fifty-foot canopies. Mountain oaks grew leavesso thick that little light could pass through. The soil beneathrested dark and dank. Thick laurel grew in so many colors GreatSpirit had not named them all. Here streams rushed clear and coldyear round, their waters filled with fishes, their banks alive withverdant mosses and ferns heavy with spore. Teeming marshes overranwith cattails tall as young girls. Concealed here were fur-coatedchipmunk, squirrel, fox and bear. Turtleback Mountain. Covingtonsenduring and overarching guardian. Great Spirits personalgarden.

Cherokee would have told how the massive buzzard, whoswooped down Turtleback with his mighty white-tipped wing, carvedout the valley at the mountains solid foot. How Great Spirit wasso pleased with the valley he decided here would be the place forhis new creature: man. It was here on this mountain, in thisvalley, that Great Spirit placed Cherokee, the real people,molded from mud of Broken Rock Creek. It was here he took meltedsnow waters and filled the Cherokee with pure blood. Here,masquerading as the wind, he blew breath into the Cherokee, andthey became one life.

Most of Covington did not know the Cherokee way, sothey in time labeled the lone wanderer Beelzebub, who had come towalk the mountains and steal young virgins.

But the stranger was none of these. He was JacksonSlocomb, a vagrant from Pennsylvania who chanced upon Covingtonwhen he turned southeast off Turtleback Mountain ridge, rather thancontinuing west to Kentucky. He was Jackson Slocomb, a man whothrough years of practice could sway young girls to his favor. Herein Great Spirits valley he found Mona Parsons, of an age that hadher primed to go.

The year was 1923.

Chapter 2

West of Boone,Carolina

Tall Corn found the camp on the edge of his farm,next to the spring where it broke from earth into sunshine. A thinstrip of pale smoke told him someone was burning hardwood at theedge of his largest cornfield. Having an unwanted camp on his farmangered him. But to camp at this location caused his ire to growwith a fierceness he had not known, for he held this a sacred placewhere earth, water, and sun, three of the holy gifts of the GreatSpirit, came together as one.

Great Spirit watches the white man and the girl. Itis their smoke that calls to mind Long Hunters and their camp, itspuny smoke rising from their dying fire that drowsy morn, the yearthey cut their way west across his Turtleback Mountain. Perched ona rock ledge, fur-coated men crawled, humpbacked and beaver-like,one by one from lean-tos and stepped into brush to relievethemselves. They returned to squat before their meager fire andpoke sticks into dying ash. Though a century and a half has passed,these two are not so different. It could have been yesterday.