Deep Down. Karen Harper
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had before him. He ran the elementary school committee—children older than that went to the consolidated school between here and Highboro—and oversaw the tiny town park and the cemetery next to the Baptist Church, where he was an elder. Though most visitors roomed at Audrey Doyle’s, Vern took in an occasional guest in his big brick house on the edge of town. Peter Sung, the agent for the Chinese Kulong family that bought most of the ginseng exported from this area, had stayed in an apartment above Vern’s store for years.
In short, Vernon Tarver was Deep Down’s answer to Donald Trump. Jessie supposed that Vern even resembled “The Donald,” with his big build, pompadour of sandy hair and business suits, except they were old ones with wide lapels. Vern was probably the only man within a hundred miles of here whose uniform wasn’t jeans.
As he stepped away and she rolled up her window, Jessie told Drew, “If we need to make a list of someone who could have—have spirited my mother away, Vern could be a lot of help. Sooner or later, locals and outsiders pass through his stores.”
“Good observation. And good observations are what we’re both going to need in your mother’s house this morning.”
“So, like I said yesterday, is Peter Sung in town? If my mother’s sang counts were low and the government stopped exports for a while, he and that Kulong family in New York he represents would stand to lose a fortune.”
“So he’d have to stop her somehow? Anything’s a possibility, but he hasn’t been around for over a week. Let’s not think the worst. We’ll case her place, look for clues to where to search the forests. If we find no help that way, I’m just praying you can recall some of her sites that were deep in.”
“I’m ready to do anything I can to find her.” Then she blurted out something she had admitted to no one—not Elinor, not Cassie, and, sadly, not her own mother. “I’m feeling guilty that I’m still upset she sent me away to live.”
He bit his lower lip, then nodded. “My fault.”
“No, it wasn’t—really. Mother and Elinor had been talking about my going to live with her when it came time for college—the impossible dream for a Deep Down girl. It just—it just happened earlier, that’s all.”
“It’s hell both loving and hating parents. I know that,” he said, almost in a raspy whisper. He reached over to touch her hand, then quickly put his hand back on the steering wheel as they turned into the hollow where Jessie had been raised.
The next statement hung between them, but neither of them voiced it: It was also hell both loving and hating what had happened to them in Deep Down twelve years ago. If he insisted, she’d find some way to talk about that later, but she wasn’t prepared to face all that today.
Neither was she prepared to see Seth Bearclaws sitting on her mother’s front porch, right under the yellow-and-black police tape.
As Seth stood to greet them, Jessie saw he’d brought one of his big carvings, unless it had been put there since New Year’s. A Cherokee, Seth was one of only a thousand tribal purebloods left, her mother had told her once. For years, besides hunting and trapping, Seth had made his living carving two-to three-foot tree trunks into local animals with chain saw, chisel and knives. At first, she couldn’t tell what was carved from this one, though. Not the usual bear or deer head.
“Sad to hear your mother’s missing,” Seth spoke first to her, then turned to Drew. “Any news of Mariah?”
“No, but with Jessie home we’ll have a better shot at finding her. That wasn’t here yesterday, Seth,” Drew added, gesturing at the carved tree trunk. “Did Mariah order that?”
“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