The Cherokee Rose. Tiya Miles
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take that under advisement,” she finally said, ruffling her costume feathers.
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The sky was slate dark, the air still warm, when Jinx left the bookshop. Smelling the tang of barbecue and hearing a din in the distance reminded her that she was starved. She followed the smell to a doorway framed by Christmas lights and a mounted speaker that pumped out the voice of Tammy Wynette. Inside, she sat at a brown picnic table covered with a sticky, checked plastic cloth and plotted out the next day’s route on her highway map. When her meal arrived, Jinx folded the map and dove into a basket of brown-tipped fries and sauce-slathered ribs.
Once she finished off her food, licked the tips of her fingers, and cleaned up with a wipe, Jinx headed for the wharf. She knew she had to see it before she left Tennessee: the riverside park. Cherokees had camped along the river here, at a place now called Ross’s Landing, in preparation for their forced march west to Indian Territory.
Jinx took the boardwalk to the end, where it hung above the water. Blocking out the boisterous sounds of passersby as she stared into the night, she imagined the scene as it might have been 170 years ago. In the summer of 1838, her father’s people had been herded here and corralled into rancid camps, where they sickened and died in the sweltering heat before their principal chief, John Ross, secured permission from Washington to allow them to postpone their departure until cooler weather arrived. Jinx pictured her ancestors inside the tent village, a makeshift concentration camp. Old ladies with sagging eyes, grown men with flagging spirits, babies dying of heat exposure against their mothers’ mourning breasts. It was as though they were all there with her at the wharf, behind a sheer curtain sewn of nothing but time. She could almost reach out to touch them, to whisper in their ears, to tell them that although it would cost dearly and always, their people would manage to survive.
And so would the slaves of her ancestors, who, though ignored by history, had walked the Trail of Tears alongside them.
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