Karen Harper - Deep Down

“A surprise for her. I bring it now so when she comes home, she will have it.”

Tears in her eyes, Jessie bent toward it, but a shiver snaked up her spine when she saw what it portrayed. In the fragrant, reddish cedar wood were roughly hewn two hands above a ginseng plant, as if the hands were protecting it. “That’s really lovely, Seth,” she told him.

“Mariah and me used to argue over ginseng, her counting it, allowing it to be taken from the woods for money. It should be for cures right here, not in other countries, not for power drinks for runners,” he said with a sneer, eyes narrowing as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Seth Bearclaws was about seventy, though with his wrinkled, wizened face, he seemed either much older or ageless. For some strange reason, looking at him, Jessie thought of the old woman in the ginseng shop in Hong Kong, but she shook off that foolish thought. Seth had tattoos all over his arms and even one on his chin, most of them of bear paws and claws, similar to the leather thong necklace dangling long, curved claws he always wore around his neck. Mariah had said the tattoos were not done with a needle but by pricking gunpowder under his skin, a Cherokee tradition from way back. Seth had lived here from way back, too, first with his wife until she died and then alone with his memories and tribal causes. In a way, Seth Bearclaws was the original eco-warrior around here.

Since he’d protested sang being sold for other things but the herbal cures his people valued, Jessie almost told him about her breakthrough in the lab. It looked as if the ginsenosides from ginseng roots might delay or halt the growth of cancer cells, even tumors, and that could benefit all mankind. But she kept quiet, hoping he might say something more about her mother.

“But,” Drew said, “this gift means you’re not angry with Mariah over her ginseng counts? That you’ve forgiven her now?”

Seth shrugged. “When she returns, she will know what this means. That she must be strong to tell everyone the plant count is too low. For years, I was telling her the old Cherokee saying that a person who deserves life must pass by three sang plants before taking the fourth one. Now she understands that, so I bring her this.”

“A person who deserves life?” Drew repeated. “Meaning what?”

“He means all plant life is sacred, don’t you?” Jessie put in. “My mother believed that, too, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be good uses for sang or herbs.”

“But some bad uses, too,” Seth said, walking past them as if the conversation had suddenly ended. He lived not far away, down the creek. Had he walked all the way here with this heavy wooden piece? He surely hadn’t carved it on site. And why had he been camped out on the porch, when he knew Mariah was missing?

“How could he have brought that heavy trunk here?” she asked Drew.

“I’ve seen him rolling them, but that would be too far for this. I’m sure not buying the superstitions about Seth around here, that he can call up mythical creatures to do his bidding. I’ll worry about him later. We’ve got to search the house, then get out to some of the sang spots others might have missed.”

Jessie took a last, long look at the rough carving of the two hands and the sang plant. She should have thanked Seth for her mother. Later, when there was time, she would go to see him and take care of that.

“First of all,” Drew said, “does anything look out of place—not just moved, but really disturbed?”

From where they were standing in the front door, Jessie surveyed the place that was once her home. A white, wood-sided house with a shingled roof, it had hardly changed over the years, while she had changed so much. This front entry opened onto a living area, with a big hooked rug and a flagstone fireplace. Six worn, dark wood chairs surrounded a long wooden table that served as the dining area; a store-bought sofa and two hand-crafted rockers faced each other before the long front window looking out over the porch. A short hall led to a kitchen at the back left and two bedrooms on the right with a small bathroom between. Her mother had put modern plumbing in after Daddy died. A long, glassed-in sunporch stretched along the back of the house, a place for storage but a lot of living, too. That was still Jessie’s favorite room.

It was so strange to be here without her mother’s presence. The place seemed too silent—haunted. “I don’t think anything’s out of place,” she said, going in to look around the main room and kitchen. She peered into the back rooms. “It’s as if she just stepped outside for something. But her denim jacket is gone from its peg by the back door and her favorite old, scuffed hiking boots aren’t here.” She heard a scratching sound and saw that Drew was taking notes.

“Do you know where she kept her sang records?” he asked.

“Some in her desk, some in a tin box in the closet—her idea of a filing cabinet.” She sat down at her mother’s pine desk in the front room, one her father had crafted with his own hands, jack-of-all trades that he was. Sliding different drawers open and gently rifling through things, she said, “Believe me, it took some convincing, from both me and Professor Gering—Elinor, to get Mother the sang counting job in this area. I made her take all the modern devices like a GPS and cell phone they offered, but she refused to e-mail her findings in on spreadsheets and snail-mailed them instead. Still, they knew she was the best person to find sang around here.”

“As I said, we’re going to have to find her sang spots,” Drew said, hovering over her. “Anything about her counts there at all?”

“No, though I can go through everything more thoroughly later. Let’s go check her lockbox.”

“Will you need a key?” he asked, following her into the larger of the two small bedrooms. Mariah had made her bed; the familiar wedding ring heirloom quilt looked untouched, slumping into the shape of two human forms in the double bed her mother had once shared with her father and refused to replace.

“Believe it or not, she seldom locks it,” Jessie said.

She opened the closet door and the earthy, fresh aroma of the forest hit her with stunning impact. Jessie closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the scent she most associated with her mother, wishing this were a magic entry into the forest, to the spot where Mariah must have met with some accident. You’re being foolish, she scolded herself. Too many childhood readings of Alice in Wonderland or The Chronicles of Narnia from Elinor.

Her mother’s closet looked small but roomy, compared to her own walk-in closet at home that was stuffed with clothes, but that made it easy to see what was on the floor. Hiking boots, walking shoes, only one pair of nice-looking flats, one extra purse. In the back right corner of the closet Jessie spotted the black metal tin box, despite the fact it was covered by a still new-looking Lands’ End backpack she’d bought her mother last year. Stubborn as ever, Mariah must still prefer her own, old, shoulder-sling pack.

Jessie knelt and slid the box out into the room. Drew squatted down to help her. It was about two-feet square and a foot deep and as old as the hills. Sitting cross-legged, Jessie lifted the lid—yes, unlocked.

“You mentioned about urging people to use locks,” she told Drew, “but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” To her surprise, the papers in the box looked in great disarray, as if someone had pawed through the contents.

“Is it always that messy?” Drew asked, his shoulder bumping hers as he sat down cross-legged next to her.

“I haven’t looked in it for years, but it’s not like her. This looks like it’s been stirred.”