High in a
remote mountain of North Carolina lives an extraordinary man
descended from myths and fairytales. But Solomon is
real flesh and blood, and he gave his lonely heart to famed
researcher Dr. Elizabeth Connell long before she moved to an
isolated cabin on his mountaintop. A damaged loner,
Elizabeth refuses to believe the folklore about a mountain
recluse. Is he just a fable, her secret protector,
her gallant but mysterious neighbor, or is he a dangerous
predator?
This is
truly a "book of the heart." The idea for it came to me one
dark night outside my Appalachian cabin. As I made my
way through the unlit garden to check on a goldfish pond
that had become a favorite dining spot for the local
raccoons, an image came to me. Call it the gothic influence
of the mountain night or the product of a vivid imagination
already spooked by the small flurries of nocturnal creatures
around me, but suddenly I could almost
see
an incredible man watching me from the shadows -- a man far
too tall, far too burly and far too exotic of feature to
be an ordinary human being. Strangely enough, he seemed
gentle, not dangerous.
I blinked
and the vision melted into the deep recesses of the
forest. But it was a moment I'd never forget.
Back in my
cabin, wrapped in the security of warmth, light
and the civilized gaze of a big, burly, loving husband,
various cats, and several dogs, I began writing.
Solomon was
born.
His story is
epic, his heritage is ancient, and his legacy might change
the future of humankind. We can say he's only a myth, but
all myths start with a breath of fact, with a stunning bit
of reality, with a true moment. Even a quick look at
the stories told by every tribe and culture throughout
history tells us that Solomon, or someone very much like
him, once existed.
And
might exist now.
I hope you
enjoy the beginning of Solomon's story, which I plan to
continue writing in long installments available via ebook.
I have a
simple philosophy: Never stop looking into the shadows for
the light.
His name was Solomon, and as far as he knew he
was the last of his kind. He was not even certain what to
call his kind, or himself. In all his reading, in all the
books and articles he'd been able to gather, he found only
rare hints that he was not the stuff of fairytales and
legends. Sometimes, when he cut himself shaving, he gave a
low sound of disgust. "Stop bleeding," he told his mirror. "You're a figment of someone's imagination, and figments
don't bleed." He wanted desperately to be like anyone
else.
On that cold, clear day in mid-autumn he had
never felt more different or more trapped in his own strange
fate. "Come along, Wood," he said to the five-hundred-pound
log he dragged behind him with long, even strides. Several
ordinary men pulling in tandem could not have budged the
twenty-food section of oak tree, yet Solomon managed it
comfortably. His breath made the faintest silver cloud in
the autumn air as he hooked a massive iron chain higher over
one shoulder, padding it with a soft wool coat he'd stitched
meticulously. "There we go," he said, as the log plowed up
damp leaves and roots. He spoke often to objects and
animals, low valley clouds and wild vegetation, the great
granite rocks fronting the mountain top's labyrinth of
caves, the smallest ferns, like green lace. He named every
moving and static being, categorized them, imagined they
listened to his voice. He lived utterly alone on an isolated
Appalachian mountain that had been old when the Himalayas
were first thrust up. He realized he talked to himself.
"Ho, there," he said suddenly. A large, grizzled
black bear lumbered up the hollow just left of him and
growled, sniffing the air, deciphering the scent of human as
it pushed heavily though thick laurel shrubs. Soon Solomon
and the bear stood not more than a dozen yards apart. His
name was Old Joe—even the people down in the cove knew him
that way. His ears were ragged, and old fight scars marred
his whitening face. Unlike most black bears, Old Joe was
ill-tempered and unafraid of either people or dogs. He
halted. His growl faded. He and Solomon traded one long
look. Old Joe spun around and galloped back down the hollow.
Solomon sighed at his effect on the mountain's
other largest creature of solitude, then moved on, giving
the chain a jerk as the log caught on a hummock of loamy
earth. In the deep shade of the southern forest, a hawk
cried out like a courier. "It's moving," Solomon called
upwards. "Yes, I know. She'll be here before we know it, and
I have to hurry." When he reached the clearing around the
cottage he set the log atop two cross pieces he'd nailed
together earlier. The ground was already littered with wood
chips and splinters. He picked up his ax and quickly chopped
the large log into two-foot sections, adding fresh,
sweet-scented chips to the mulch around his boots. In less
time than a man armed with a chain saw could have done the
job Solomon split the log sections into firewood, which he
then scooped into his arms and carried to the cottage's back
porch. Even though the cottage was outfitted with propane
heat, a person needed good hearth fires to warm the soul and
let others know all was well. The aroma of the cottage
chimney would find him anywhere on the mountain. He stacked
the wood neatly atop a pile that lined the entire back wall
nearly to the roof. About head high, by his standards.
He went
through the house, checking it one last time, bending to
scoop up bits of dust or stray rug lint with his thick
fingertips, straightening his paintings, rearranging a few
of the books that filled tall cases in tall rooms. His ears
were attuned to any small sound of arrival; the trace of a
car far below, where the road ended and the jeep trail
began. He could hear a deer's footstep a hundred yards away,
but no sound of his new guest.
Solomon
stood on the front verandah, frowning, surveying the yard,
then got a rake from a shed behind the cottage. He arranged
the wood chips like a mulch in front of the stone walkway,
where autumn rains had made the soft loam a little soggy.
She was accustomed to pavement, to sidewalks, to
civilization. He would be her Sir Walter Raleigh, spread his
cape in the mud. He went around the yard, breaking ragged
branches off the underskirt of the trees, tidying the
forest. A young white pine, scarred by insects and bent from
the last winter's ice storms, made an eyesore. He wrapped
his hands around its trunk and pushed it over.
After he
carried the small tree out of sight, he returned to the
yard, put away the rake and the ax then hesitated once
again, checking off his mental list of preparations. Delaying the inevitable, said the
a capella song
he always heard in his own voice. He believed there'd been a
time when his ancestors had walked openly in the world, but
that time was long past. Why had god or nature created such
an outcast human being filled with such painful musings on
identity? He was simply Solomon, and this day would change
his lonely life forever, beginning a journey he expected
would break his heart.
A large
hawk swung down from the sky and landed on a tree limb a few
feet from him. "Hello, Feather," Solomon said. Frowning, he
communed with the raptor for a long minute. "Go and find
her," he said suddenly. "Yes. Be my eyes. Take care of her."
Feather
lifted off, grazing a current of air, floated over the
ridge, and faded from sight.
"All
ready," Solomon said with dull acceptance. There was nothing
to do now but leave, so that he wouldn't frighten
Elisabeth.
So that
she would never know he'd been there.
Because
for all intents and purposes, he couldn't possibly exist.
*
Let go of the steering wheel. Shut your eyes
and do it.
Sweat slid down Dr. Elisabeth Connell's face.
Her hands, bearing a thick diamond wedding band on the left
one, made damp marks on the wheel's leather cover. She
pushed her right foot, encased in a soft brown boot, harder
on the accelerator. Her low, silver Lexus was packed full
with luggage and supplies, and sped up sluggishly as it
reached a curve that doubled back along a hundred-foot drop
into the mountain creek below. Tall southern laurel and
rhododendron flashed by in a green blur, along with a
jeweled panorama of autumn forest. The Lexus's sleek side
swung within inches of an old guard rail made of wood and
stone, built over sixty years ago by poor whites, Cherokees,
and a few black men hired by the federal government at
starvation wages.
Those hard-driven mountain men had not
anticipated a woman who thought of suicide every day.
High in the North Carolina mountains, on the
edge of national forest land, traffic was sparse much of the
year. On the weekends the scenic roads would be packed with
families from cities like Asheville and Raleigh, and some
from as far as Atlanta, viewing the mountains in their
autumn splendor. But not now, thank god. The aging guard
rail loomed in front of Elisabeth. A sign. A test. She had
been the brilliant Dr. Connell, MD, PhD, genetics
researcher, scholar. The renowned Dr. Harris Connell's
beautiful young wife and partner. Tiny Cloris Isabella
Connell's absolutely devoted mother. She'd never failed a
test.
"End it
now," she said aloud. The Lexus shot around the hairpin
curve at over sixty miles an hour, and she began to lift her
hands from the wheel. To let go of her nightmares and her
life. Reflections of shadows, clouds and mountain, flashed
across the windshield, her blood became mercury, her
conscious mind began to disconnect. Calm, methodical,
dignified, infinitely honorable and deeply passionate
Elisabeth Connell lifted her strong hands in surrender.
And was
saved.
A
majestic gray hawk sailed in front of her windshield.
Elisabeth slammed on the brake and snatched the steering
wheel to the left. The Lexus careened across the on-coming
lane and onto the road's weedy inside shoulder, coming to a
stop as if nursing the mountain, the front bumper nudging a
towering granite wall speckled with moss and trickling
water.
The hawk
disappeared into the forest without pausing—a vision, a
guardian, or a mere lucky coincidence for the deeply logical
to consider, which included Elisabeth. She stumbled from the
car and leaned against it, gasping for breath. The air
smelled of crisp rain waiting in pearl-gray clouds just
above the mountaintops, and distant chimney fires from a few
cabins and small farms hidden in deep, unseen hollows.
Elisabeth's lungs drew it in like an elixir, without her
noticing. She shoved aside tendrils of sweat-soaked auburn
hair that fell over her eyes, a deep blue that had once been
mesmerizing, but were now bloodshot and dazed. She slung off
a long brown sweater she wore over her turtle-neck shirt and
jeans then hunched over, hugging herself.
Watched by the stoic mountains, Elisabeth
Connell, 35 years old but now ancient, a strong woman who
had been broken, retched into the Joe Pye weed along the
roadside. She dragged a baby bracelet from her jeans' pocket
then caressed her wedding ring. Her hand went to her throat.
She dug under the shirt's high collar and clawed at three
terrible scars that curved from beneath her left ear to the
center of her throat. All her talismans, the blessed and the
damned, were with her.
Elisabeth washed her mouth with sweet, ice-cold
water she scooped from a tiny waterfall on the weeping
granite wall then got back into her car. She drove on toward
the tiny valley below, holding the fast car to a crawl, her
muscles on fire and her mind blank. She barely noticed the
small, pleasant wooden sign that welcomed her to Anna Kim
Cove, or cloud-shadowed Walker Mountain rising, majestic and
mysterious, ahead of her.
Waiting.
2
An early
settler named our little valley after his daughters, so the
story goes. They were saved from wolves by a great big
mountain man who set them high up and safe in an oak tree
right where the crossroads meet today.
From Tall
Tales of Anna Kim Cove
Etta
Woody, Rita's mother, 1957
Anna Kim
Cove lay in the laps of three legendary mountains: Hogback,
Kalowa and Walker, which was the largest and the least
accessible. New Age psychics and self-made gurus insisted
the cove anchored some ancient, primal vortex in the Earth's
magnetic field. Cherokee scholars said it had once been the
site of an important peace town. A travel writer titled an
article Lovely, Lost Anna Kim and recommended tourists drop
by on their way to someplace else. But for the three-hundred
hardy souls scattered along the ridges and hollows in house
trailers, small clapboard homes, and cabins where the
next-door neighbor might be a mile away, Anna Kim Cove was a
strong, beating heart that drew their isolated lives
together like the seams of a warm quilt.
The
two-lane route from Asheville curled down Hogback's western
ridge into the cove's heart, where it intersected with
Sleeping Turtle Road, a narrow, dilapidated gray-top,
crumbling at the edges and pocked with shallow holes. There
sat downtown. Five aging wood-and-stone buildings hunkered
around the sleepy intersection like old friends at a small
table, with huge hemlock and fir trees hovering over them.
The shops were just shabby enough to feel comfortable and
well-used.
Beside
Burk's there was Murphy's Hardware, which sold a little bit
of everything, including farm supplies, guns, and auto
parts. Penny's General Store dealt in knicknacks, greeting
cards, housewares, cosmetics, and hair care products.
Penny's Hair and Nail Salon occupied a back corner of
Penny's General Store, behind a curtain. Penny's U.S. Post
Office, a cubicle with a clerk's window, occupied a front
corner. A brightly windowed side room was home to Penny's
Diner, which served breakfast, lunch, and an early supper
from its simple grill and counter. Penny Barker was the
community's most avid entrepreneur.
Across
the road, a service station, Woody And Sons, offered gas, a
good mechanic, and a combination taxidermy/butcher business
run by a Woody daughter, though not one of legendary country
singer Rita Woody's kin needed to work for a living,
anymore, and most of them had moved to her
five-million-dollar horse farm outside Nashville, Tennessee.
And then
there was Alton's Place. It was a strange, two-building
hybrid, still a source of intrigue to outsiders and even
some locals, although they revered rich, aging Dr. Franklin
Alton, of the Asheville Alton's, who had suddenly moved to
the cove thirty years ago, following an even earlier retreat
by his eccentric sister, Joan. The front building was old,
and briefly had been Anna Kim Cove's bank, decades ago. Now
that building was a single large room with stone walls, a
creaking wooden floor, and a fancy, pressed-tin ceiling. The
old doctor had turned it into an art gallery of sorts. He
sold the most amazing oil paintings, some realistic, some
abstract, of mountain landscapes, wildflowers, streams, and
animals. There was also finely crafted blacksmith
work—amazing wall pieces of swooping metal and curlicues
that defied description. Every painting, and every piece of
iron art, was signed with a scrolled initial. S. Dr.
Alton said it was the work of a shy mountain man he'd
befriended, and would not reveal the identity. Buyers came
from all over the south. The gallery had been written up in
every regional magazine. There was no doubt in anyone's mind
that the artist was Dr. Alton, himself. He was such an odd
old owl anyway, the locals said with affection.
Beside the art gallery, connected to it by an
arbored walkway draped in trumpet creeper vine, sat the
second building. Dr. Alton's medical clinic. Inside its
wood-and-fieldstone walls the doctor maintained a
state-of-the-art medical facility, including a small
pharmacy and an operating room for minor procedures, and
even a room filled with a dental chair and supplies. Dr.
Alton called in dentists and other specialists as needed.
Since his influence and respect were unequalled in the
medical world, some of the most prestigious doctors in the
country had served the people of Anna Kim Cove, all without
a single cost for the patients. Franklin Alton rejected all
praise, all awards, and all publicity for his work. Like the
cove, the clinic existed in a quiet state of grace.
Anna Kim was the kind of place where no one
thought it odd if an old woman wearing three sweaters and
overalls drove to the crossroads on her tractor to buy milk
and tennis shoes. Mattie Crow sat high on her 1942 Ford. Her
hair, long, black, and streaked with gray, fluttered from
beneath her third late husband's beige fedora hat. Her
deeply hooded brown eyes peered calmly through large
tortoise-shell glasses. She'd glued a single tiny snail
shell near the hinge of each temple. Snails were among her
favorite beings. She believed the smallest, slowest
creatures had the biggest view of the world. Some people
said she was a shaman. She said she was a watcher.
Mattie
steered the tractor to a diesel-fuming stop before the long
tin awning of Burk's Store. Burk's was the community grocery
but also kept a back corner full of work clothes and shoes.
Nothing fancy, but then the three-hundred-and-twenty-two
residents of greater Anna Kim Cove didn't dress up much.
"Hi ya,"
she said to Tommy and Susie Burk.
"Afternoon," each replied. The blond, heavyset couple,
dressed in canvas coveralls, sat on an old church pew under
the awning. Their youngest child slept in a car seat by
Susie's booted feet. Tommy was cleaning a chainsaw in a
precise way that said he had two years of college and didn't
let his equipment rust. Susie sipped from a cola bottle and
chewed the peanuts she extracted with her tongue. Peanuts
and cola could make a meal on a long day. The Burks looked
tired and sweaty, and were flecked with sawdust. A
hundred-foot fir tree lay in neatly sawed pieces so close
beside the store that the pile of limbs from its bushy green
crown dimmed the sunlight at one end of the porch. The
hardwood forest gave way to a pocket of lush evergreens near
the crossroads. Tall hemlocks, firs, pines, and cedars
loomed over the intersection in shaggy splendor, footed in
ferns that had turned a soft golden color for fall. Mother
Nature always seemed to be waiting for any excuse to take
over the cove, again. Everyone knew the valley and its three
protective mountains were haunted. "Wind got the tree this
morning," Susie said.
"Gonna be
a hard, windy winter," Mattie returned, and pointed a bronze
finger at the sky. "I seen the signs." The Burks nodded. No
one questioned Mattie Crow's weather forecasts. Not just
because she was Cherokee, but because her son, Albert, was a
meteorologist for a Tennessee TV station. Besides, winters
were always tough in Anna Kim, tough and beautiful, like the
mountains themselves. A person thrived, survived and
celebrated, or didn't.
Mattie
climbed down from her tractor. "Got to shop."
"Holler when you're done, Miz Crow," Susie said. "I'll come
in and ring you up. Me and Tommy need to stay out here
and watch the road as much as we can. We told Doc Alton
we'd keep an eye out."
Mattie frowned. "For what?"
"His visitor. You heard about her. Sure. Name's
Elisabeth. She's some kind of doctor."
"Never heard a word. Who is she?"
Susie gaped at her. Even though the Turtle Town
Cherokees avoided the outside world as much as possible,
they loved to join in the local gossip. "She was in the news
last year. I mean, the national news. Her story was on
Tom Brokaw and Nightline and all those shows. They
talked about what happened to her for weeks."
"Those folks talk about a lot of things that don't mean
much to me."
"Her husband used to come here to visit Doc
Alton. You saw him a time or two here at the store. Big,
tall handsome man. I know you did. Dr. Connell. Harry
Connell. He wanted to ask you some questions, wanted to go
over to Turtle Town and interview Big Po. You turned him
down flat. Remember? He wasn't a real doctor. He was a
famous scientist. He studied genes." Susie spelled the word.
"You know. What we're made of. What makes us. What we
come from."
Her frown deepened. "Now I remember him."
Tommy
scrutinized her face. "How come you didn't like him?"
"Spent too much time up on Walker Mountain, pokin' around." She grunted.
"Busybody. Is he coming back and bringing his wife?"
Susie winced. "Miz Crow, you sure nobody told you what
happened to him and his wife and baby?"
Mattie searched her mind. "No." She was
beginning to feel impatient. She had milk and shoes to buy,
chickens waiting to be fed, and roots to dig for tea. "Just
say what you mean."
"It was terrible. I hate to tell you."
"I've seen and heard and done a lot of terrible
things in my life. Sayin' 'em out loud don't make 'em worse.
Go on."
Susie took a deep breath. "A crazy man broke in their house
up in Maryland. Just some nut who didn't like
scientists. He killed Dr. Connell, killed his baby girl,
and just about killed his wife. This Elisabeth who's
coming here. She fought him like a tiger but he beat her
nearly to death and tried to cut her throat. They say
she laid on the floor about half-dead and watched the
crazy man write on the wall with her baby's blood. When
the police got there they caught him in the yard and
shot him to death."
Mattie Crow grew very still, and very quiet. A
black pall settled over her. Tragedy like this wasn't just
bad luck. It was fate. Bred in the bone. It meant something.
And it was coming to her cove. "And now this Elisabeth's
comin' here, for sure?"
"Yes, ma'am. Today. Supposed to, anyhow. Doc
Alton's gonna let her stay up on Walker for the time being.
That's what he says she wants. Just to stay alone up yonder.
And he says it's what she needs. You know how he is about
that mountain. A plain fool. Bless his soul." Every word
Susie spoke conveyed amazement and disapproval. Her husband
shook his head. "A city woman alone up there all winter," he
mused. "What in the world can Doc Alton be thinking? Letting
her go up there alone. She doesn't know what she's
getting' into. Never even seen the place before. I bet
she doesn't even know how to start a fire in the
fireplace."
Susie looked past Mattie and the tractor. Her
eyes widened. "There she comes! Doc Alton said she drives
one of those!"
The Lexus rounded the last, lazy curve at the
base of Hogback and crept through dappled sunlight along the
black two-lane. Mattie and the Burks could just make out the
driver by the time the car drew even with a ramshackle
produce stand that marked Anna Kim Cove's unofficial
southern boundary. Their first glimpse of Elisabeth Connell
made Susie cluck her tongue in pity. Elisabeth's face looked
white and drawn. Her coppery hair straggled from a haphazard
clasp at the nape of her neck. She hunched over the car's
steering wheel, stared straight ahead, and guided the car at
a speed so slow that two of Zene Murphy's bored dogs
circled it easily, barking. When she stopped the car at the
crossroads, which had no sign indicating Sleeping Turtle
Road, she sat for a full ten seconds. She seemed to be
staring at Alton's Place. A landmark.
"You think she's got car trouble?" Susie
whispered.
Tommy shook his head. "Just nervous and not sure where
she's going, I guess."
Finally Elisabeth switched on her blinker and
turned right. The car inched along, heading west at no more
than ten miles an hour. It finally disappeared around a bend
in the forest. The Burks let out a dual sigh. "Lord, that
woman's not doing too good," Susie said. "You'd think she'd
have kin to go visit. Somebody to look after her."
"She's got no business going to live up on
Walker," Tommy repeated. "I just can't figure why Dr.
Alton's gonna let her."
Mattie barely listened to their chatter. She
faced west and looked up pensively at the ancient mountain,
which towered above the cove in rounded, red-and-gold
majesty. She knew why Franklin Alton had invited the young
woman to live up there. He and Mattie shared a humbling view
of the world, a big way of thinking, a knowledge of facts
and fancies beyond most people's belief.
Solomon's
Seal