Chapter 11

Family History

“No ifs about it,” Grandpa says firmly. “Ya’s goin’ git married. It ain’t too soon ta be a-thinkin’ about it.”

     “Grandpa!” I change the subject. “How come Rebecca and most of the ancestors are buried here, but her folks are buried clean on the other side of the hill?”

     “Think on it. Who ya reckon got buried first?”

     “I’m not rightly sure,” I say.

     “It’s time ya got sure. Knowin’ the ones ya come from is as important as knowin’ your name. Ya’ve heared me talk about Rebecca’s older years, right?”

     I nod.

     Grandpa steps to Rebecca’s stone. “And her husband was Lucius Kent. When he passed, she buried him beside her folks, Edwin and Cora. But time came when she moved him to right here.”

     My mouth flies open. “What made her do such a thing?”

     “I’ll commence at the beginnin’.” He pushes the wheelbarrow down the slope to the two large stones and a smaller one, where I stood just a wisp ago.

     “Ya know who’s buried here, right?”

     “Edwin and Cora.”

     “And the other one?”

     “Cora’s baby, I reckon.” I am familiar with stones that mark dead babies.

     “This is the grave of Cora’s son, Rebecca’s brother, but he waren’t a baby.” Grandpa lowers his head as he speaks. “Kilt back in 1777, the year of bloody sevens.”

     Shivers run up my arms. “Bloody sevens?”

     “That’s what folks called it. Whites and Indians was both on the warpath that year. Massacres a-plenty. Cora’s boy was kilt by white men, made to look like Indians done it. White folks called Indians savages, but some Whites had savage ways ya won’t find in your history book.”

     My shivers turn into shudders as images bleed into my mind.

     “Our kin was friends with the Shawnee,” Grandpa goes on. “That ain’t true fer others who come over them mountains. They wanted Shawnee land. Plumb didn’t care who they kilt ta git it. Killin’ a white boy was meant ta break ties with Indians.”

     “Wasn’t this Shawnee land?”

     “Shawnee huntin’ parties come up here fer game, but they didn’t live up here. Edwin and a Shawnee chief cut notches on trees ta mark off our land afore other white men could claim it.

     “When Rebecca were a young’un, England’s king commanded settlers ta go back east’a the mountains. But Edwin dug in deep and stubborn. He reckoned his bargain with the Shawnee was the onliest law he needed.”

     “What did the king do?”

     “Heckfire, with colonists risin’ up, that king had more’n Edwin’s family ta worry on. They stayed put and, sure ‘nough, the king opened the land fer settlin’ agin.”

     “Good.”

     “Weren’t all good. Folks swarmed this land like biblical locusts and kilt what Indians they couldn’t chase off.” Grandpa shovels dirt around Edwin’s and Cora’s stones and stoops to tamp it down with his hands, slow and deliberate, respectful-like. “Fifty years later we had ta fight ta keep this land.”

     “Fight? With who?”

     Grandpa tucks the last bit of dirt around the baby’s little stone. He turns his wheelbarrow on end against the oak, sits in its shade, and takes a deep breath.

     “When Lucius was gone and buried and Rebecca gittin’ on in years, some’a them locusts what settled ‘round here didn’t pay mind ta boundaries marked with a tomahawk.” The breeze stills as Grandpa’s voice booms, and even the leaves seem to listen.

“Varmints tried ta claim it as their own. George went ta court ta fight fer the land they’d lived on fer more’n fifty years.” The fire in his words makes it sound like Grandpa’s fight, not George’s.

     “That’s when Rebecca moved Lucius ta the other side’a the hill. She reckoned folks couldn’t lay claim to a cemetery. Don’t know if it made a difference where Lucius lies, but the court finally seen it George’s way, and give ‘em clear title ta what was already theirs. So this place belongs ta us fer as long as we got kin ta live here.”

     He gets up, brushes off the seat of his britches, and pushes the wheelbarrow toward the shed. “Some day it’ll be yers,” he says over his shoulder, “yers and yer young’uns after ya.”