Black Bill - A Novel Of Walker Valley and Tremont in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

CHAPTER ONE

1859

He was not a beautiful bird. In fact, he was ugly as seven sins, but the Cherokee needed its large wingspan to fly over the muddy earth and dry it sufficiently so their own sunburnt men and women could drop corn seeds down into rows upon rows of readied land. Creepy and grotesque, the bird soon tired of flapping its wings in order to dry every inch of soggy ground, and landed, fatigued beyond his skinny bones. Here was the only place to touch down; he plunged and planted his clawed feet into the soil of the Great Smoky Mountains. So soft it was!

Black, fertile; he could smell it with the best of his senses; so keen as to detect even the newly dead, buried in leaves and dirt from over a mile away. Strength returned and wherever he landed, valleys formed. Soon, he was ready to rise again, and with the uplift of his heavy stretched wings, the mountains erupted from deep within, pushing, pushing, towards heaven. Suli, they called his type. Buzzard. It didn’t matter that some of the birds they called buzzards were actually vultures or even other types of carrion birds; all were called buzzards according to the Cherokee. A flying possession of powers and plumage that could ward off diseases and clean up the dead.

It was exactly the sight William Marion Walker and Nancy Caylor Walker wanted to see when they moved to the valley. The year was 1859 and the nearby communities of Cades Cove, Gatlinburg, and Little Greenbrier Cove were thriving. The young couple desperately wished to settle somewhere close, but far enough away so they could call it their very own. As they scouted the area and cut through thick and lush green growth, there appeared a semblance of a clearing, a place where the mountains cleaved, and a valley stood still.

“Seems like a good place right here.” William slowly walked, crunching leaves with his sturdy black boots, tapping at the soil to test the swampiness of the ground, taking in all the trees and resources that could be turned into a sustainable life. He nodded his head and smiled. I think I’ve found it…

The young couple crossed Schoolhouse Gap Road, really just a rough trail barely tamped down, and continued through Spicewoods and the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River, when the kettle of buzzards - must’ve been a hundred of them! - provided undeniable proof that this land could provide game and opportunity. After all, the Cherokee’s legend about how a buzzard made the valleys, and then the mountains, just by lifting its wings, was entrenched in their minds, and though they only read the Bible, the Almanac, and very few other books, the young Walkers had certainly heard all the Indian stories.

“Mind all the buzzards, Will!” Nancy’s excited voice reached her new husband. “The Cherokee said if you see one, it means new beginnings. They sure are ugly, but they’re some of the most useful animals God created.”

“There ain’t been no Cherokee here since the winter of 1838-1839 when they marched westward. Trail where they cried, they called it.”

“But they certainly left their stories and lore. Folk still talk about the Cherokee. I find it a might fearful to be honest, a way of life I just don’t understand with their spirits in the trees and all…yet just look at that buzzard…the one right there, swirlin’ in the air. They are the strongest of birds. Ugly, what with their gray heads and almost reddish eyes and whatnot. But they are survivors. Eat anythin’. Nature’s garbage cans. Keeps us from havin’ to smell a bunch of rotting meat. Or to see it. Reckon we’ve got enough to keep us busy tryin’ to settle ourselves ‘round these parts.”

William nodded. If there were lots of buzzards, there would always be plenty to eat. It meant enough animals were around to perish and keep them fed. Eighty dead carcasses, one hundred chicks that barely made it out of their eggs, and three hundred other freshly killed or deceased animals were the spoils of just one month in the wilderness; such a haul kept this band of buzzards firmly in place within the walls of this quiet and isolated wedge of the Great Smoky Mountains.

“Let’s see. How about here? For the house?”

Hands on hips, she looked around with a critical eye. Nodded. “It’s got its slopes, but seems flat enough overall…”

A rushing river carved its way through the hollows of the valley, as bushes upon bushes of pink and white rhododendrons faced the newcomers. Birds sang out and rustlings in the woods stopped for just a moment as a ray of light fell where the young Walkers stood. Their two horses and one cow plodded along, walking over to a calm indentation in the riverbank where they dipped their heads and tongues to slurp mouthfuls of water. The saddlebags were stuffed full, adorned with anything and everything one could drape over or hang on its sides: skillets, kettles, pots, furs, ammunition boxes, coats, sacks of flour and sugar and coffee…

“Ah, yes. God has blessed us by stopping us right here and now. Just look, Nancy…”

It was a place of spectacular beauty, morning dew still bespangling every object, and every leaf glittering in golden light. It was the perfect spot for the couple, married earlier this year. William Marion Walker was twenty-one years old and wielded his six-foot two-inch frame and 190 pounds of hard muscle around the mountains like a boulder crashing down the craggy spine of the highest peak.

Nancy, all of nineteen years old, was pretty, sweet-natured, and as strong of mind as her husband was in body. She had a quiet confidence, a serene and motherly nature that had captivated Bill and made him feel safe. She lets me be exactly who I am. Fool, don’t let her get away! And he didn’t. Married her very quickly, after realizing he’d never have to trade away his true nature with such a woman. After all, what does a man have if he must trade away a shred of his pride, a part of his dignity, a section of his soul, as if they were just measly flaky nuggets of the entire gold medallion?

He roamed, slowly, touching the trees, white oaks, birches, poplars. Felt their strength, measured the girths, knew these would make great sturdy logs to build a home. Hefty winds swayed the trees, first one way, then the other; sometimes knocking trunks, weaving leaves together so when he looked up, he couldn’t tell where one tree stopped and the other began.

Everything is so green! Lush. Fertile.

Yes, I’ve found it. Here is our home.

William Marion Walker grew up in Rudd Hollow in Tuckaleechee Cove; the Cherokee word, Tuckaleechee, means “peaceful valley”. But to young William, it was more than just a peaceful site. It was home. A place where the entirety of God’s nature and beauty, animals and heritage, was a chest of drawers, pulled out and emptied onto the floors of the smoky mountain range.

“That mountain right there looks like a stack of winter livestock fodder. See how it’s like a pile of hay? Kinda broad and stubby? I’m going to live at the foot of that mountain someday.” There was little doubt amongst his fourteen siblings and numerous friends that he would do anything he set his mind to, for William Walker, even at a very young age, was known as a boy, then a man, who could do anything, build anything, make anything happen. He inherited such competencies from his father, Marion Walker, a Covenanter Saddlebag Preacher, who traveled on horseback to small towns and isolated flocks to preach the journey with Jesus. Along the way, this fighter/preacher learned all the skills needed to be a miller, cattleman, orchardist, bear hunter, and could hunt, trap, and fight off both man and beast. William’s mother was of the old McGill clan of Scotland, established in the mid-1300s and sporting their own, very green, very proud, tartan.

Scots-Irish were proud of their heritage and rightly so. Hearty stock they were. They fled Huguenot persecutions, famine, fought with soldiers of George III, and came to America with a “stomach full of hate”, ready to fight to the death for freedom and independence. After all, they had enjoyed the same fiercely individualistic lifestyle in the highlands of Scotland, with just a few nuisances from the Romans and then the English with their lack of economic opportunities and their forcing clans to abandon their Ulster Protestant beliefs. Suspicious, set in their ways, and almost brutally independent, the Scots-Irish transported those aspects of their culture across the ocean to America, running their lives based on their own interpretation of a famous Bible verse, with just one small tweak: Do unto others as they threatened to do unto you.

William’s parents were both leaders of their communities and William had an innate desire to take over that role within a community of his very own. John Oliver over in Cades Cove had done it. So had the Ogle family in Gatlinburg. A distant relative, his double first cousin, John “Hairy John” Walker, would, in the next few years, move to Little Greenbrier Cove and sire eleven children, seven of whom would become the famous Walker Sisters. And here, in this valley, as the buzzard circled just once more before landing on a thick and sturdy branch, something snuck into William Walker’s soul; a feeling that he was settled, could be the ruler of a brand-new community,...