Missing Witness (24 page)

Will mouthed the words
I'm sorry
as he strained to hear who was speaking at the other end.

“I said,” the female voice at the other end continued, “that this is Susan Red Deer Williams. I'm calling because I thought of something.”

“What is it?”

“It's a follow-up to something we had talked about.”

“About Isaac Joppa?”

“Not exactly. It's about the Indian family we think Joppa may have had contact with. Chief King Jim Blount and his son, and his daughter. The Tuscaroras.”

“What do you have?”

“Just one item I forgot to tell you. I explained how Blount and his family had apparently been converted to Christianity by the time that they got to New York and joined the other Tuscarora tribes. But there's something about that I forgot to tell you. About a cross…a painted cross…”

“I hope this isn't another artifact that takes me on a wild goose chase,” Will said bluntly.

“Don't worry, Counselor. This isn't an artifact. But it is a historical item that may be of interest.”

“Fire away.” Will watched Fiona slowly wade ankle-deep, into the small pools of water on the beach. She flashed him an impatient look.

“When Blount and his son and daughter showed up to join the rest of the Tuscaroras, he was reported to be wearing a cross around his neck. It was painted red and white.”

“A painted cross? Who painted it?”

“I'm not sure. I don't know any of the details. But it was painted red on one side and white on the other. It was a wooden cross, apparently. And he had a leather strap through it and wore it around his neck.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” Williams said, “that's all. You can file that away in your ‘for whatever it's worth' drawer.”

After thanking Williams, Will hung up, turned off the phone, and dropped it back into his pocket.

As Will slowly walked over to Fiona, he wondered whether the little red-and-white cross mentioned by Williams had anything to do with Isaac Joppa.
Who painted it? And why?

Isaac Joppa could have run away any number of times. After winning the match with Great Hawk, he was no longer bound and, as far as he could see, was no longer being observed. He was free to come and go as he wished. He was given his own tent. Great Hawk made another tent for his father—the chief—and himself. The Indian girl slept in the third tent.

The real question was, why wasn't he taking off down the Carolina coast? He knew there would be a danger, as he traveled, that he might be spotted by some of the English colonists. And that was a risk he was willing to take. But for some reason that he could not entirely explain, he felt compelled to stay with the Indians.

He found himself thinking often about his father. Malachi Joppa was not a jovial man. He was often stern. But he was also thoughtful and probing.

Reverend Malachi Joppa had felt called to Bath, North Carolina, even though he knew its reputation as a wild place—more hospitable to pirates, drinking, and thievery than to the establishment of churches or the enforcement of the standards of decency.

Isaac had dutifully gone with his father to some of his outdoor evangelistic meetings. His older brother, Adam, and his sister, Myrtle, were also required to be present.

But they were rather dismal affairs, with only a handful of locals showing up—most of them to jeer and mock. Isaac sometimes wondered, derisively, whether his father had required the three children to be present
so the roughhewn pews in the outdoor church he tried to establish would not look so pitifully empty.

Rather than face his father and reveal his longing to leave the provincial, suffocating environment of his life on the Pamlico Sound, he chose to run away instead. He left no note behind. He realized now how heartbreaking…how terribly painful that must have been to his father.

Perhaps, in a small way, Isaac's continued stay with these three Tuscarora Indians had something to do with his father—the completion of a task that, somehow, his father was unable to complete.

Malachi Joppa was generally disliked by the locals. And Isaac learned, after joining the English navy out of Bristol, England, that his father had been stabbed to death on a side street of Bath. His murderer was never found.

Since that time, Isaac had struggled to rebuild the memories linking him to his father. But now, as he lay in his hut made of animal skins, resting from the heat of the day, he thought back to one particular encounter.

Symbols are powerful things,
Malachi Joppa had told Isaac. They were sitting on the split-log benches after one of his poorly attended evangelistic meetings. Joppa asked whether Isaac had seen the skull-and-crossbones of the pirate flag. Isaac nodded. His father pointed out that it was the symbol of death, and crime, and sin. It was meant to strike fear into the hearts of all who saw it.

Then he pointed to a cross he had on a table at the front.
God's symbol of the Cross is more powerful than any pirate's flag
, he explained.
The blood shed there has the power to cleanse the most hellish of men and the most hideous of crimes. That is why I must do as the apostle Paul confessed. Woe to me if I do not preach the cross—and Christ crucified.

Isaac thought about that. And about his new relationship with his Indian captors.

They had softened toward him. Lately, Great Hawk had invited Isaac to go clam and pearl hunting along the inlets of the coast. They collected oysters and crabs together. Great Hawk taught him how to fish with a sharpened spear. King Jim Blount had kept his distance, but allowed Isaac to sit around the fireside for meals with them.

Isaac felt the most troubled about the girl. Since his rejection and his match with her brother, she had seemed more pensive and forlorn. Isaac knew he had to be careful—not to inflame any passions nor imply any romantic commitment. And yet he felt genuinely sorry for her in what
appeared to be a desperate loneliness—separated from the rest of the tribe and having few prospects of a husband.

One day he found her kneeling before a mound of sand, apparently in great emotional distress. As he walked closer, he saw that before the prostrate girl, on the top of the pile of sand, there were two carved figurines. One was painted white and was facing east. The other, facing west, was painted red. The Indian girl was speaking passionately, almost pleading, to the white figurine. Then, she would break her conversation with that figure and would plead with fear and trembling to the red figure.

After an attempt to calm her, Isaac was able to piece together the significance of this ritual.

The white figurine represented a good god—and the red figurine represented the bad god. Her soul seemed to have been caught in an inner turmoil—an irreconcilable conflict between these symbols of two, mutually exclusive deities.

Isaac sat and watched her weep and wail. As he studied her, he suddenly had a thought.

He gathered her into his arms and had her stand up. She was still sobbing and chanting in her Tuscarora tongue, pointing at the red figurine of the evil god.

Isaac told her in a strong, calm voice to walk some twenty or thirty feet away and be seated. Then he scurried across the clearing and into the forest, collecting a large pile of red berries. Then he gathered some small sticks, brought the red berries and sticks, and placed them before the sand mound. By then, the girl was wiping her tears and had regained her composure. She studied Isaac with curiosity.

Then he ran off to hunt some of the white chalk stone he had seen on the sandy edge of the forest. He quickly came back with it and gathered his materials in front of him.

After a few moments, the girl stood up and walked slowly toward Isaac's position. He jumped up, playfully waving her off so she wouldn't see what he was doing. She laughed a little at that but resumed her seat. After a while, though, she became impatient and again walked over closer. Isaac again jumped to his feet and playfully shooed her off so she could not see what he was doing.

Finally, after a considerable period of time and intense work, he invited the Indian girl to join him and see the result of his endeavors.

She walked slowly over to Isaac. Next to the sand mound where she had been worshiping stood a second mound of sand created by Isaac. He
had set there a crude wooden cross. He pointed to the cross and nodded. Then he pointed over to the mound with the two figurines and shook his head with disapproval.

After a dramatic pause, he reached for something behind him, slowly pulled it out, and showed it to the Indian girl. At first, she gasped.

Isaac had shaped, out of sticks and reeds, a small stick man who was painted red with the juice of the berries. The crude cross he had carved was also painted red on the side facing out.

Isaac patted his chest and bowed his head in grief as he placed the red-stained human figurine on the cross.

The Indian girl's eyes widened as she wondered what would happen next.

Isaac took three sharp thorns and placed one in each of the arms of the figurines, and one in the legs—to the Indian girl's horror and amazement.

Then he took the red-stained figurine, carefully cradling it in the palms of his hands, and placed it in a hole he dug at the foot of the mound. He gently covered it with a large rock. Then he motioned toward the sky to indicate the lapse of time.

Then he took the stone and removed it from the hole in the ground, lifting up the figurine. But as he did, he flipped the figurine so that the other side faced the Indian girl. She cried out as she noticed the other side had been painted white. Isaac took the figurine with the white side showing and reached for the cross, which, as he turned it around, was shown to also have been painted white on the other side. He then placed the white-sided figurine next to the white side of the cross and bowed down before them.

He turned to the Indian girl, whose unblinking eyes and searching expression told Isaac that she was comprehending this new and powerful mystery. She sat down before the two sand mounds—the one with her pagan symbols of a battle between two equally powerful but morally opposite gods—and the other with a figure of a man who had been painted with evil, yet had conquered it through his own inexplicable goodness.

She sat for hours, glancing back and forth from one sand mound to the other. From one set of symbols to the other.

As darkness fell, she left. Isaac retreated to his own hut. Then he did something he had not done for many years—he fell on his face in the sand of his hut and cried out to God. He cried over his past transgressions. Over his wasted life. Over the betrayal of his father's confidence in him. And over the ignorance and darkness that covered the minds and souls of these Tuscarora Indians—who, after all, had saved his life.

Isaac was sleeping. The moon was full. Then he heard voices outside. He glanced out of the hut and saw the Indian girl talking quickly and passionately before the two sand hills, pointing to the symbols he had painted. Her brother, Great Hawk, was standing next to her and listening intently.

Farther off, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away, was her father, the chief. He was standing, motionless, with no expression. But his eyes were riveted on the figurine and the cross, both painted white.

The next morning when Isaac awoke, he scurried out of his hut. To his amazement, the other two huts were gone. All traces of the chief, his pretty daughter, and his son, Great Hawk, had vanished.

They had left silently, without any goodbye. Isaac's eyes scanned the clearing which had been home to him for the last few weeks. Then he noticed something.

He walked over to the mound he had made the Indian girl. The white-painted figurine was still planted in the top of the sand. But the cross—painted red on one side and white on the other—had been taken. It was gone.

Somehow, Isaac Joppa knew he would never see the three Indians again.

37

F
IONA HAD GONE OVER TO
G
EORGIA
'
S
cottage to visit—in large part, Will figured, because of the rising tension between them. He knew he had become single-focused on the case. In his more honest moments he admitted he had become just plain insufferable.