Even As We Breathe. Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

      

      EVEN AS WE BREATHE

       A Novel

      Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

      Published by Fireside Industries Books

      An imprint of the University Press of Kentucky

      Copyright © 2020 by The University Press of Kentucky

      All rights reserved.

      Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

       www.kentuckypress.com

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke, author.

      Title: Even as we breathe : a novel / Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle.

      Description: Lexington, Kentucky : Fireside Industries Books, an imprint of the University Press of Kentucky, [2020]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020019774 | ISBN 9781950564064 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781950564071 (pdf) | ISBN 9781950564088 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Cherokee Indians—Fiction. | North Carolina—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

      Classification: LCC PS3603.L35169 E94 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020019774

      This book is printed on acid free paper meeting

      the requirements for the American National Standard

      for Performance in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

      Manufactured in the United States of America.

       For Mom and Dad, my original storytellers

       The Lovers’ Prayer to the Body

O musk & mineral,	salt-slick lips—each pore’s lifted hair a language only felt;
O marrow-mystery,	where bone softens to redbreath & healing’s quiet machinery.
We worship skin &	bone but what of meat? It is muscle’s movement we resent:
push & pull & will.	Let us be still. Let us be still. O let us be still.

      —Benjamin Cutler

      Contents

       Prologue

       1 Bones

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       2 Stains

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Acknowledgments

      Prologue

      About the place—when I take you there or when you find it on your own, just know that what the old folks say is true. This land is ours because of what is buried in the ground, not what words appear on a paper. But also know this: what is buried in the ground isn’t always what you think. It’s just the beginning. It’s the beginning of the story—the beginning of all of us who call ourselves Homo sapiens. Fitting, I guess, that what I found buried, just as I was trying to figure out how to become a man and still be human, was the very thing that threatened to take it all away. Just when I began to see what taking control of my own life might look like, I realized I was not who I thought. And neither was this place.

      That summer in 1942 when I met her, really met her—before I found myself in a white man’s cage and entangled in the barbed wire that destroyed my father—I left the cage of my home in Cherokee, North Carolina. I left these mountains that both hold and suffocate, and went to work at the pinnacle of luxury and privilege—Asheville’s Grove Park Inn and Resort. I guess I had convinced myself that I could become fortunate by proximity—escape Uncle Bud’s tirades and my grandmother Lishie’s empty kitchen cabinets just by driving a couple of hours up the road. It sounded good to tell folks I was raising money for college; but the truth