The Cherokee Peach

Hit was washday and I was haulin water from the spring when Levy Johnson come down the mountain. My fire was goin good but I needed me some more water for the rinsin. Levy was on his way to help Daddy with plowin the corn and he was ridin a big sorrel mare, all geared up, but when he saw me he slid down from the mare's back and said, I'll tote them heavy pails for you.

His hair was the color of Mister Tomlin's gold pieces and his face was smooth and put me in mind of the ripe peaches on our red-leaved Cherokee peach tree. I smiled when I thought this for just then the sun broke through the morning mist and I could see the fuzz, same as a peach has, all along Levy's jawbone.

When I wrote that scene in Signs in the Blood, I had this particular peach tree in mind -- red leaves, small pinky-red peaches. I have no idea what the varietal name of our peach tree (which grows down at our pond --not by the cabin) might be. But I know how free and easy my older neighbors were with proper names of plants and it seemed not unlikely that Little Sylvie might have known a red-leaved peach as a Cherokee.

A recent post on the Dorothy L list about authors who don't exercise due diligence in their research got me thinking and I asked Mr. Google about Cherokee peach. Turns out there is one -- but I doubt it's the same.

I also learned that peaches were a very early introduction to the Americas -- probably brought in by the Spaniards -- and they 'went wild' so long ago that many people (myself included) assumed they were native.

Peaches were cultivated by the Native Americans and one of the many sad stories from the Trail of Tears was that the soldiers destroyed the Cherokee orchards to force them away from their land.

But peaches are stubborn and wherever the fruit drops, before long a new tree will spring up. Resilient-- like the Cherokee.

The River

Though we don't see the river from our house, it's an abiding presence in our lives. To get, well, almost anywhere, we have to cross the river. I love the sight of it and it always shows up somewhere in my books.

from Signs in the Blood -- Little Sylvie at the river:

I looked at the river, runnin there so fast beneath the bridge. Teacher had showed us on a great map how a flatboat could go down this same river into Tennessee, on to Alabama, back to Tennessee and Kentucky all the way to the Ohio River and from there to the mighty Mississippi and right smack down to New Orleans. And in New Orleans, she told us, you can get on a ship that can take you right around this world.

It seemed a marvel to me that his same water I was lookin at would travel so far while I stayed put. I thought how I would like to go on one of them boats and see all them places . . .