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
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
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