Forests of the Night

  Tyger! Tyger!

  Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night

  What immortal hand or eye

  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

  —William Blake

  There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

  —Nadine Gordimer

  Contents

  1838 The Great Smoky Mountains

  Present Day—Miami, Florida

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  1838

  The Great Smoky Mountains

  In his sixty years, Tsali had never shed the blood of a white man or another Cherokee in anger or defense. But that was about to change.

  Sitting on a sunny boulder outside his family’s cabin, Tsali was sharpening his ax blade with a wedge of shale. Nearby, his two eldest sons were employed in similar fashion, preparing their own axes for another day in the forest, hewing firewood for the approaching winter.

  Already, autumn’s crimsons and golds were blazing through the poplars and birches high on the nearby peaks. And from the earth and stones beneath his feet, Tsali could sense the gray advance of winter. Each day the sun grew more feeble. Soon the drifts of snow would mount, a vast stillness would descend, and yet another test of the family’s strength and resourcefulness would present itself.

  After a while, Tsali’s ax blade was so sharp it could shave the sparse hair from his arm or cleave a man’s skull in a single blow.

  Such would be its use before that day was done, though Tsali had no inkling of his fate or the ruthless men galloping toward them at that moment.

  Isolated on his remote riverside farm, the same land his ancestors had cultivated before him, Tsali knew nothing of the harsh changes sweeping the Cherokee Nation. All through the region, to make room for gold prospectors and white settlers, the U.S. government was systematically stripping Cherokees of their land, rounding them up and marching them halfway across the continent to the prairies of Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory. Those who resisted were killed on the spot.

  On the savage trek, which became known as the Trail of Tears, thousands of Cherokees died of starvation or of disease or at the hands of the U.S. Army. A third of the entire Cherokee Nation would perish before reaching that distant land of parched soil and bleak, treeless plains.

  But living in his remote woodland valley, Tsali was ignorant of the events already under way and made no attempt, unlike many in his tribe, to conceal his family from capture.

  As they washed and mended clothes in the shade of a giant poplar by the bank of the Nantahala River, Tsali’s wife and daughters laughed quietly. Their pleasing voices sounded to Tsali like the music rising from the river’s endless movement. The day was blissfully cool, the sky a perfect blue canvas stretched tight across the heavens.

  Despite her advanced age, Tsali’s wife was still a pleasure to his eyes. In their private times, the woman was as eager for the comfort and satisfaction of her husband’s body as when they’d first wed. And he was as eager for hers. A comfort beyond all measure.

  His contentment was increased by his daughters’ full blooming. They were becoming fine women, strong and clever, with the dark, haunting eyes of their mother. Soon Tsali would journey to Quallatown or one of the other far-off settlements, introduce the girls to the clan elders, and set about finding suitable partners.

  As Tsali rested his gaze on the women, the rumble of hooves sounded from the west. Garbed in blue woolen uniforms with gold buttons and hats of various shapes and sizes, four horsemen broke through the nearby woods, and whooped and fired their weapons at the sky as they galloped into Tsali’s clearing. Their leader took the measure of the gathering of savages, then veered toward the boulder where the old man sat and drew his blocky pistol.

  The soldier was tall with black hair. His eyes were close-set and glittered with a bitter fury. His cheeks were densely bearded. Even from several feet away, Tsali could detect the reek of corn liquor.

  Barking a command, the soldier waved his pistol for Tsali to rise. The old man pulled himself to his feet and his boys ran to his side. The other three soldiers were a motley collection who more resembled vagabonds than disciplined fighting men.

  Having mastered a few English phrases, Tsali’s eldest son took charge of the interchange. This sergeant was hereby ordering Tsali and his family to pack whatever belongings they could carry and make ready for a month’s journey.

  For what reason? Tsali demanded.

  By order of President Andrew Jackson and the Congress of the United States, the sergeant replied. You and your people will accompany us to the Bushnell stockade, where you will remain until such time as you begin your march westward.

  Tsali began to protest, but the sergeant jumped down from his horse and rammed his pistol into Tsali’s stomach, while the other soldiers grinned and aimed their rifles at the family of Cherokees.

  You will do as instructed or die where you stand.

  After gathering bundles of possessions, Tsali and his family followed the orders of Sergeant Matthew Tribue, the bearded man with the narrow face and eyes of volcanic rock.

  Later, as they trudged away from their home, his sons stared at Tsali, awaiting his command. Were they going to surrender to these loutish men, be marched away to the slaughterhouse without a fight?

  Tsali made no move to resist but plodded forward with his eyes on the rocky path before him. After only a mile or so, Tsali’s wife, a heavy woman, lagged behind, and Tribue, who had been steadily sipping from his flask, jabbed the old woman in the back with his bayonet to hurry her along.

  She fell to the ground, bleeding, while the soldiers hooted at their sergeant’s antics.

  Tsali managed to hide his anger as he tended his wife’s injury, then hoisted her to her feet and helped her forward down the trail.

  As they marched, Tsali whispered to his sons, telling them to ready themselves for attack. They would take the soldiers’ guns and drive them away.

  A mile or so later, when the soldiers were joking among themselves, Tsali motioned to the boys and they drew knives from their bundles and threw themselves on the four military men.

  In his haste and drunkenness, one soldier discharged his rifle by accident and blew off the side of his own face. He fell from his saddle, mortally wou
nded. As the sergeant took hasty aim on the eldest boy, Tsali dragged the big man from his horse and, in one swift stroke, drove his ax into the man’s forehead, breaking open his skull as cleanly as a ripe gourd.

  The other two soldiers tore away from their attackers and fled.

  In the sergeant’s fall to the ground, a tin locket on a strip of rawhide came loose from around his neck. Tsali’s son retrieved it and handed it to his father. Inside the tin heart was the miniature portrait of a young woman. She was round-faced, and her hair was worn in tight curls around her painted face. To Tsali, the woman’s toothy smile resembled the cheap, beckoning look of the barroom strumpets he had seen in the white man’s settlements.

  Tsali closed the locket and placed it on the dead soldier’s breast.

  Bloodied and weak from the struggle, Tsali stood on that trail, a half-day’s walk from his home, and absorbed the certain fact that he and his family were now forever exiled from their ancestral land.

  With few choices open to him, Tsali determined they must strike out at once for the nearby peaks, which were honeycombed with caves. There they would hide themselves until some future time, when this difficulty had passed.

  In the following days, they hunted the abundant game and harvested the late-season crab apples and berries. Twice they heard shouts from distant soldiers searching below them on the mountainside, but on neither occasion did a white man come closer than a half-day’s walk to their hideaway.

  Later still, the weather turned gray and cold. Fog and rain thickened the air. The men’s hunting skills provided a steady supply of fresh game, while the girls wove baskets and ornaments to decorate their rock-walled home. They were determined to outlast the white man, live in what peace they could manage.

  One frigid morning, as the family was awaking, a stranger appeared in the mouth of the cave.

  Tsali’s sons scrambled for their weapons.

  But the Cherokee man showed his empty palms. He meant no harm. He had been searching for Tsali for over a week, carrying a message from the elders of the tribe.

  An offer had been put forth by President Jackson. The leader of the white men could not abide Tsali’s revolt. He feared Tsali’s actions might inspire a wider rebellion. So desperate was the president to end Tsali’s insurgence that he was offering the following bargain.

  All Cherokee people not already forced from their homes and marched to the desolation of Indian Territory would be granted permission to remain on their tribal land, if only the renegade Tsali would surrender himself and his family to a firing squad.

  When the man left, Tsali was silent. Hours passed. Tsali would neither eat nor reply to his wife or children, but sat cross-legged at the mouth of the cave, puffing on his pipe and staring toward the distant blue haze of the mountain ranges.

  Two days after the offer was made, Tsali rose and gathered his cherished family before him. Tsali was a simple, practical man, not the least bit superstitious. In his long, difficult deliberation, no great spirit from beyond this world of rock and water and sky spoke to him, guiding him to his choice.

  Tsali simply decided that for the greater good of his people, he must surrender. He would lay down his life and the lives of those he cherished so others of his people might have a chance to survive. His family received his decision with quiet calm. No tears, no arguments.

  Days later, without ceremony, his strong young sons and handsome daughters were shot down before a firing squad, then Tsali was tied to the same bloody, mutilated tree and killed by a volley of bullets. In a small act of mercy, Tsali’s wife and youngest boy were spared.

  The federal government upheld its bargain and Tsali’s death did indeed save scores from death on the Trail of Tears, and secure a home for the thousands of his people who populate those rugged blue mountains today.

  No one would claim this plain, pragmatic Cherokee was a saint. His sacrifice did not atone for the sins of mankind, and no cathedrals were erected to honor his name and pass on his teachings. Although his selfless act changed the course of his people’s future, because he was a Native American his story survives only on the margins of the nation’s history. A pebble among boulders.

  Yet when dropped into the center of a still pond, that trifling stone sent ripples of consequence spreading outward in ever-widening circles until one of those tiny waves, tainted now by a hateful poison, washed ashore a century and a half later in the most unlikely place.

  Present Day—Miami, Florida

  One

  Charlotte Monroe had sixty seconds to act.

  Starting now.

  She watched the red-haired boy raise the handgun and adjust his aim. He had bangs and was heavily freckled. Dennis the Menace hits puberty. Fuzz darkened his upper lip, and a single red pimple festered in the middle of his forehead like a tiny bullet wound.

  Charlotte had a long-standing bias against redheaded boys. Blame it on Jake Calvin from her childhood, a gawky kid with maroon freckles so dense he looked like he’d been splashed with acid. He taunted her. Mocked her ratty shoes, her hand-me-downs. Reminded her that her older sister, Marlene, wore the same flowered dress two years before, and how Marlene used to lift that very skirt and flash her panties, sometimes even pull her panties aside. He dared Charlotte to do the same. Show him what she had.

  Thirty-five seconds, thirty-four.

  The boy she was watching brought back Jake Calvin’s face, causing a ghostly interference. This redheaded kid had the same sneer, the same heckling tone as he aimed his cheap automatic at the black cat humped in the corner of the bare room.

  “Here, kitty,” he called. “Here, kitty kitty.”

  The cat hunched tighter, as if it heard the same tone Charlotte did—a whine of deceit and hatefulness. The boy’s lips were mashed flat, straining to hold back his glee.

  Twenty seconds left, nineteen.

  One of Charlotte’s cats, Max, had the same white spats and tuxedo shirt. She told herself Jake Calvin wasn’t the boy before her now and it wasn’t Max cowering. No reason to be so worked up. Her job was to see clearly, make a decision and act. She’d been batting a thousand—now this simple situation without even a human life at stake was bedeviling her.

  She had no doubt the boy was capable of murdering an animal. An emergent torturer. Serial killer in training. Buried beneath his flattened gaze was a cold, fuming rage.

  But for the first time she doubted herself. It felt like a trick, too obvious. She was exhausted, ready for this whole awful scene to be finished. Five seconds left. Four, three.

  So, just to be done with it, she pressed the No button and a soft ping sounded behind the mirrored glass.

  No was her official decision. No, the little shit wouldn’t fire. But this time she wasn’t certain. She truly didn’t know if the kid would or not. A helpless cat exploding against a wall? It was possible. She’d seen worse in the last two weeks. Much worse.

  Pressing the button didn’t stop the videotape. The scene played to the end, as they all had. So she could discover how accurate her forecast was. And, of course, seeing all the previous scenarios affected her subsequent votes. Like life on the street, learning from each episode, constantly modifying.

  Every video she’d seen for the last two weeks was authentic, real people, real violence. News footage, or grainy, homemade tapes confiscated after arrests, trophies from self-absorbed sickos, or taped confessions. Earlier in the week she’d spent eight hours watching people speaking into the camera. No sound—just their faces, mouths moving. Charlotte’s assignment was to pick out the ones who were lying. Then there were the dozens of soundless videos shot from the dashboard cameras of patrol cars doing roadside stops. Is this driver dangerous or not? First thing this morning, with breakfast still warm in her belly, she’d watched a Georgia state trooper get out of his car, walk to the white Toyota he’d pulled over, confront a heavyset man in loose clothes—the man, out of the car, acting passive, head slumped forward, but doing something with his jaw, a nearly invisibl
e grinding of teeth—then, seconds after Charlotte had pressed the Yes button, the attack she’d predicted occurred.

  The trooper was off guard. Misreading the danger. Charlotte mashed the button several more times. She felt the scream rise to her throat: Draw your weapon, step back, you idiot, watch out, goddamn it!

  With dreadful speed, the motorist produced a machete from behind his baggy trousers and hacked the trooper in the upper arm, and when the cop fell to the pavement, the motorist hacked him again. She’d known it would happen. She’d read the approaching spew of rage, an extra blink, a dark twinkle, the subtle grind of jaw. She knew, damn it, she saw it coming. An early-warning system probably instilled by the string of ducktailed men that flowed through her mother’s double-wide when she was a kid. More than one of them had eyed her with a slanting smile, and stumbled her way. Jim Beam in one hand, lust in the other. But by then she’d positioned herself near the door and had always managed to escape. Even at that age she could sense some seismic jiggle, see the change of light in their eyes, a spasm in their lips, some clue that came and went so fast she doubted a camera could catch it.

  On the screen the redheaded boy fired and the cat screeched and jumped a yard in the air. Plaster exploded. Incredibly, the boy missed. He fired again, then a third time, swinging wildly, shooting in a blind panic, blowing gashes in the drywall.

  The cat must have escaped, because when the shooter staggered into camera view again, his arrogance had crumpled into misery. He stared at the lens, shoulders weighted with doom, bitter tears muddying his eyes, and he jammed the pistol against his temple.