marry a Cherokee? I thought all the Cherokees were gone from Kentucky a long time ago.”
Such pain attacked that Nanny Fay cringed.
Adelaide tossed the stalk of grass and took hold of Nanny Fay’s wrinkled hand. The sadness crinkling her sweet face pained Nanny Fay more. “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. No.” A warm tear rolled down Nanny Fay’s cheek and landed on her lip. She licked its saltiness and shook her head. “It’s good for someone to know. ’Cause I’ll leave this earth, same as my Eagle did, an’ I got no child to carry on our story. Tellin’ you…that means somebody’ll know.” Her lips trembled, and another tear ran down. “Then Eagle, his folks, an’ his granny, they won’t be forgot. If I tell you, will you write it down on paper? Like a real story?”
“Of course I will. I’ll write it all out for you.”
“No, child.” Nanny Fay cupped Adelaide’s cheeks. Her rough palms were probably chafing her flesh, but she needed to connect with the girl. “Will you write it out for you? To remember?”
“Yes.”
Nanny Fay lowered her hands, almost collapsing with joy and relief. “Good. Good.”
Adelaide shifted to the grass and folded her legs to the side. She fixed her focus on Nanny Fay’s face. “I’m listening.”
Nanny Fay closed her eyes. Gathered her thoughts. Then she aimed her sight on the tips of the waving trees branches. “Eagle’s story starts over a hunnerd years ago, with a young Cherokee maiden named White Fawn. She an’ her tribe lived right here on the mountain. They hunted some, an’ they farmed some, an’ they lived in peace on this land.” Even without trying, her voice turned almost singsong, the same way Eagle’s had when he talked of times long ago. “White Fawn was promised to a man from her tribe, a brave man named Wohali. They was gonna marry late in the spring of her seventeenth year, after Wohali built their house. But he didn’t get the chance to build it.
“Soldiers came, sent by the president named Jackson.” Pictures formed in Nanny Fay’s head, and while she talked, the words played out in her mind’s eye. “They forced White Fawn’s tribe to leave their homes. The Cherokee was marched off this mountain, allowed to take nothin’ with ’em except what they could carry. But White Fawn had a crippled leg from a bad fall when she was still a itty-bitty girl. She couldn’t keep up with the march. She fell behind, an’ the soldiers left her to die. So many of her people died on that long march to Oklahoma Territory. But White Fawn, she was stronger’n them soldiers knew. She didn’t die. She found her way to a cabin, where a Scottish man an’ woman an’ their son took pity on her. She stayed with them all that summer, an’ when fall came, the son—a man named Ben Tuckett—made her his bride.”
“Is that who Tuckett’s Pass was named after?”
Nanny Fay jumped. She’d almost forgot Adelaide was there. She nodded and looked at her to tell the rest of the story. “After Samuel Tuckett. He was Ben’s daddy. Now, three boys was born to Ben an’ White Fawn, but only one growed to manhood. That one was named Chetan, which means ‘hawk.’ In the year 1858, he married up with a red-haired girl named Sarah McKee, who come from Ireland as what they call an indentured servant. She birthed a boy they named Wohali in 1860.”
“Wohali…After White Fawn’s first love?”
Nanny Fay nodded, pleased. “You’re rememberin’ real good. Sarah caught a fever only two years after that little boy was born, an’ Chetan buried her up in the mountain a piece, right close to where White Fawn’s tribe had lived. White Fawn and Ben are laid to rest up there, too.”
A frown sagged Adelaide’s pretty face. “That’s so sad.”
Nanny Fay shrugged. “Maybe. But that’s the way o’ things, with people bein’ born an’ people dyin’. We ain’t made to live forever. Our bodies gotta die afore our souls can go on to heaven.”
“That might be true, but I don’t like it.” The girl’s eyes spit fire. “Too many people die too soon. My birth parents”—
Nanny Fay gave a little jolt. The girl was took in by folks who didn’t birth her?
—“and the Cherokees who were forced off the mountain. Sarah McKee. Your husband, and the babies you birthed…You didn’t even get to nurse them.”
Nanny Fay hung her head, pain stabbing anew.
“I think everybody ought to be