The Long Lost Soul of Mabry McKee

Alyson Hagy

Nobody knew easy in that country beyond the Clinch River where the nearest doctor was two days’ travel by wagon and winter bellies puffed themselves full on shucked beans and salt.
Johnny McKee was a miner when he could get a shift, and a farmer. His more generous neighbors said he could heal a sorefoot horse with a rare touch, that he had a fine tenor voice for the old songs. But it was generally held that Johnny McKee was a no-count husband and father. Sarah McKee was a Salyer from Grant’s Fork, a woman known to be strong as trumpet vine until the stillborn birth of twin boys took the thick from her blood. But Sarah got her corn ground, and she kept her children dressed in something better than rags. Several of those children even spent a few mornings on benches at the mission school.
Not Mabry McKee. She was the fifth of Sarah’s eight, and she was sour water from the start. She came into the midwife’s hands with her face to the cabin floor. She colicked so bad the aunt who mixed up a mud plaster believed her screaming would drive the care right out of her body. And maybe it did. Maybe even then there were powers within Mabry McKee that wished to have their way.
The child lived on, but she was thought to be bad luck and trouble even among her brothers who were hellions enough in their own right. The fact that she featured rakestraw hair and yellowy, upturned eyes known neither to the McKees nor the Salyers was enough to cool the coals in her ma’s heart. By the time she was twelve years of age, Mabry had only a small place in her large family. She was good with hunting traps and snares. She brought Sarah fresh meat and hides that could be traded for coffee or sewing needles. For this she was given a quilt to share with her younger brother, Mathias, and a pallet in the corn crib.
Mabry and Mathias ran trap lines for muskrat, fox, rabbit, and any other creature they could bewitch with their lures. The rivalry between them was as hot as pitch. Sarah McKee had a kind word for the child who filled her stew pot, and Mabry, for all her sullen separateness, lived for a kind word. But when Johnny McKee ambled home one Sunday with an ale maker’s song to the morning sky and a long barrel rifle for his son Mathias, Mabry felt the bite of an ill-fitting harness at her shoulders. The rifle had been won in a miner’s card game. If Mabry wished to retain her ma’s affection, she would have to surpass her brother before he hoisted his new gun. She begged her sister Ada to slip her an entire corn cake before dinner was rationed, and she left for the empty, wild mountains to the west that very evening.
There were catamount in those hills. And antlered deer with hides as dark and smooth as beaver. These were what Mabry intended to bring home in triumph.
The first night she slept at the foot of a chestnut tree known to herself and Mathias. The tree gripped a flinty creek bank like a giant’s knuckled hand, and it bore the marks and names of all those who had passed through its wilderness. After sleeping under a blanket of pine boughs and the chestnut’s own whispering leaves, Mabry drew her skinning knife and flayed Mathias’s name from the tree bark where it had been carved just below her own.
The second day she went farther into the mountains than she had ever been. The game paths were crooked and faint and sometimes ended at the top of towering, sun-washed cliffs as if the animals that made them had soared away as eagles. Mist as heavy as her own uncombed hair clung to the steep hollows until past noon. Still, Mabry managed to make her way into a portion of forest that was alive with turkey and gray squirrel and ferns taller than her own pa. She scouted with a honey bee’s patience, then lay delicate, hand-woven snares around a bubbling spring that showed signs of night visits from every animal she knew save the human kind. Though her cake was gone, and her belly burned with hunger, Mabry McKee lay down on the cold earth warmed by her own satisfaction. She had toiled so carefully and so late she could not see the features of her bedding ground, but the sweet scents of pine resin and dew-drenched laurel were comfort enough. Even the screeching of nearby owls failed to frighten her, though she knew owls were said to collect the voices of the dead when they could.
Mabry slept until that time before dawn when certain creatures set themselves to flee the morning while others prepare to receive sunlight as if it is their crown. She was awakened not by sound, nor by any movement she could see, but by the feel of something crouched upon her ribs. She reached to push the weight from her body but touched nothing. It was as if a prankish brother had decided to smother her with a flour sack, only the smothering did not lessen even when she thrashed her arms and legs. The weight grew greater instead, heavy at her chest, her face, her straining throat. Soon she was unable to draw any breath at all. She wished only that her assailant had skin or bone so she could spill its blood before she died. But there was no skin, no bone, nor did she smell the devil’s breath she expected. Strangely, the creature abandoned her as quickly as it had come when the soft notes of a thrush’s song trilled from the laurel branches above. She was unmarked save for the vexing memory of her fear.
Mabry quickly left that place and went to the bubbling spring where she found a plump rabbit, nearly all white in its fur, trembling in a snare. She killed and dressed the rabbit, gathered her empty snares, and made her way home.
If Mathias envied the white rabbit pelt, he never said so. Mabry’s mother filled a large pie with the flesh of the rabbit, which they all ate, and she took the pelt for herself. Mabry was happy in her way, pleased that she had ventured into hunting grounds unknown to Mathias. She thought no more about what had happened until she retired to the corn crib for the night. Mathias was there. The patched quilt was there on the pallet. But there was no sleep for Mabry McKee. She could find its solace nowhere.
This went on for three full days and nights before sister Ada drew from Mabry the story of the creature, or spirit, or dream that had robbed her of her breath. Ada, who was promised to a young carpenter from Lebanon and who wanted no more stains upon her family name, made Mabry wipe her face and braid her white chaff hair and walk with her to Fob Mill where there lived a lay preacher and his healer wife. The preacher opened his book and placed a rail-splitter’s hand on Mabry’s bowed head, but even he acknowledged his wife’s peculiar wisdoms. The preacher’s wife was from country far to the south. She had no kin nearby, no clan name that had ever been heard before, but her poultices and salves were much valued. She possessed, too, the black hair and coppered face of those who mixed with the vanquished Cherokee. This was not held much against her because of her devotion to her husband and his God.
The preacher’s wife asked to be alone with Mabry. She made them root tea and sat the girl on a wide oak stump so that her story could be considered in sunlight. The girl’s suffering was evident in her bruised and sunken eyes. But she had little fear of her recollections. She told of the travel, the hunt, the great rocky slopes cloaked in mist. She described the weight that had pressed on her in the night. The preacher’s wife nodded and listened and asked Mabry McKee to recall the forest paths she’d crossed and the shapes of the farthest mountains she had seen. When Mabry recounted all she could remember, what the preacher’s wife said was this:
“The place you have been is well known to those who wander from the world. It has been a crossroads of sorrow and revenge. It is also known for its bounties. I have never been to this place, but I have heard of it many times. You must go back. You must help the one who reached for you find rest. Then you will find rest of your own.”
“But how will I know?” asked Mabry McKee, who kept her courage though she felt a shadow cross the beating of her heart.
“I believe you have embraced the anguish of a soldier,” said the preacher’s wife. “One who left the King’s wars of his own cowardice and accord. You must find something of his and hold it dear and lie in that place until his grief has passed from you both.”
Ada took her sister’s hand and led her through a widow’s veil of summer rain back to their home. She baked for Mabry two corn cakes, one with sugar and one with salt, and she lent Mabry her sheep’s-wool shawl for the journey. She told no one else of Mabry’s plans.
Because she knew the way, Mabry traveled quickly, pausing only to cut a deep notch next to her name on the great chestnut tree. She laid a single snare at the bubbling spring, then climbed toward the circle of laurel and pine where she had lost her sleep. There was still light above the black page of the horizon, so she saw what she hadn’t seen before: great hewn logs that lay scattered like twigs cast before a wind and pools of blue moss rock that spilled from a row of ruined cairns. She searched the cairns, her fingers pinched against frost and stone until they fell upon the round, smooth shape of a button. The button was butter-colored and carved from horn, no larger than a silver coin. As a feathered drowsiness brushed over her, Mabry McKee ate from her salty cake and lay down in the lee of a log as she had before. Sleep swept over her like a river. She lay as dead, without dreams, until that sly time before dawn. Again, she was awakened by a tightening grip among her child’s ribs. Again, all breath was stolen from her. The horn button was in the fingers of her right hand. She clutched it with all her might, but it did no good. Her freedom was bought only by the high, private notes of a thrush’s song.
Mabry McKee felt no more herself. She rose and abandoned that place, shaken. She paused at the spring, hoping to find strength in its pure, bubbling water, but as she knelt to drink she spied a falcon in her snare. It was a large bird, long-winged and yellow-eyed, and it had bloodied itself at the talons in its struggles. Mabry cut the snare loose from its pin. She dared get no closer to the falcon, which took flight in silence, smears of its own blood fresh at its beak and butter-colored chest. Mabry watched the bird soar upward with the snare trailing from its ankle like a spinner’s yarn until she could see it no more.
This time Mabry did not even enter the corn crib she shared with Mathias. She huddled like a beaten cur at the corner of her family’s cabin, shivering though she had no fever, sleepless though she had no strength left in her young bones. Ada waited only a single night before she led her staggering sister back to Fob Mill.
The preacher, who saw them coming, retreated to his grape arbor to put a fresh edge on his scythe. The preacher’s wife boiled dried herbs for a tincture and wrapped Mabry McKee in quilts and listened to her tale while the child sat on a slat-back chair in front of the fire. Mabry showed the horn button, the edges of which had cut into the palm of her right hand.
“I have not told everything there is to tell,” said the preacher’s wife, her eyes as black as the talons Mabry had seen swallowed by the sky. “What I said about the King’s soldier is true, but it is not true for you. That place is part of the long Indian road that winds from the top of these lands to the bottom. Warriors rested there with slaves plucked from their homes after treacherous battles. The one who clings to you is a child killed because she was too small to make the journey north. Her skull was split against a tree as her mother wept. She seeks passage home. You must take her what I give to you. You must leave it at the alder where she died.”
“But how will I know?” asked Mabry McKee, who wanted only to feel the plunging wind of sleep again.
“You will know.”
The preacher’s wife busied herself for many hours with her herbs and her hearth and her words spoken in a language Mabry had never heard. The husband and his holy book were nowhere to be seen.
This time Ada made Mabry biscuits layered with meat from a deer Mathias had shot with his fine gun. And she walked with Mabry as far as the blackberry brakes, singing, hoping to see her sister smile. As Mabry departed she gave Ada the polished horn button and a dry kiss upon the brow.
She paused only to sharpen her knife blade and carve a full cross into the chestnut tree next to her weathered name.
Mabry laid no snares at the spring. She found the alder tree the preacher’s wife spoke of, and she placed a leather pouch at its base while the evening sky splintered itself with dry lightning. She was not to open the pouch, but she was to pass the night in that place as well as she could. After she fashioned a lean-to from fresh pine boughs, Mabry knotted Ada’s shawl about her shoulders and tried to cheer herself with victuals. But she had no hunger. Her next wish was to remain alert until she was assaulted; yet in this too she failed. The lightning brought with it thunder that struck at the surrounding peaks like shod hooves, and the thunder brought the stinging rain that some men believe will wash them clean. For Mabry McKee the storm brought unwanted sleep.
All happened as before, the crushing weight, the blind struggle, the loss of breath and hope. Only after the unseen thrush had once again had its say was Mabry able to utter words in her defense. “What do you want from me?” she howled. “What am I to give?” But there was no answer. In a desperate rage, she tore the frail shelter of her lean-to into pieces. Then she found the leather pouch lying undisturbed and dry beneath the glimmering alder tree, and she tore it into pieces as well. To Mabry, the pouch looked as though it held nothing but a coil of common grass. She flung that grass into the mocking morning breeze.
Mabry McKee knew she had done wrong, and she began to run home as if pursued by a storm larger and more destructive than the one she had survived. She dared not stop at the spring. She did not want to see what might be waiting there. But she twisted an ankle on a knotty root and tumbled off the trail until she found herself at the edge of the spring’s glassy pool. There, where icy water left the dark chamber of the mountains, grew a slender plant. The plant’s flowers were unlike any Mabry had seen before. The blossoms were the pure white of a horse’s panicked eye with petals as hard and even as teeth. Mabry could not resist. Though the tree limbs above her hissed and creaked with warning, she stretched a finger toward a single, unscented bloom. As she touched its pale blades, the flower recoiled with a long human sigh and wilted to hang over the water like an unrung chapel bell.
Mabry, lashed by fright, ran all the way from the Indian road to the tidy fence and garden at Fob Mill. When she arrived at the preacher’s cabin she was speechless and briar-torn and filthy. The preacher’s dun mule was gone. His grape arbor was scorched as if it had been circled by fire. His wife was packing a cloth bundle at the foot of her iron-frame bed. She did not seem surprised to see young Mabry.
“It is bad then,” said the preacher’s wife from behind the glossy shells of her eyes. “Did you touch the seed in the pouch?”
“I saw no seed.”
The preacher’s wife paused as though remembering many verses of many songs. Her dark lips strained above her jaw as if she meant to say something in her strange language, but when she spoke again it was in that country’s English. “I have failed you. It was no soldier. It was no murdered child. What pursues you is some frenzied portion of your own fortune. It wishes to abide with you now because it does not relish what is to come in later days. You must go back.”
“I will not go back.”
“Then,” said the preacher’s wife, hoisting her bundle to one shoulder, “we are both lost to this life.”
The preacher’s wife was never again seen beyond the muddy whipcord of the Clinch River. Mabry McKee returned to her family but not for long. She was first reported walking the steep road to Abingdon burdened by a long barrel rifle and a cloth bundle of her own. It was later whispered that she was ill used by the whiskey traders who frequented that route, though none could say for certain. One man, distant kin of the Salyers, claimed to have heard the girl keening Hebrew scripture among the rough bargemen of the Roanoke River during the year she would have turned twenty. A peddler of cloth and kitchen wares reported that a girl of Mabry’s disposition was known for laundering sailor’s clothes and more along the tar-painted wharves of New Bern, her hair still light-colored as a schooner’s sail. There have been many stories, but there is no fine finish for Mabry McKee. When, or how, she came to her end has not been recorded in this country. But of her beginning, and the strange trials of her person, more is remembered than can be understood.