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During the Great Depression, a stranger came to my small Appalachian town. No one could understand what language he was speaking.
This morning, as I have done every day for the past thirty years, I walked the mile from my house to the town square. It’s a pleasant walk, first down a quiet residential street lined by stately Victorians and shaded by arching elms. Then, after about 3/4 of a mile, I turn right onto Waters Street and continue on it until I reach the town square. At its center is a 19th-century Neoclassical courthouse, which, although no case has been heard in it in nearly fifty years, still stands proud.
There are over a dozen antique shops and art galleries on the square, catering to the thousands of tourists who invade the town on summer weekends and at Christmastime. I almost never go inside them; most of what they sell is tacky, overpriced junk. But today, when I saw what was in the window of Miller’s Antiques, my poor heart almost gave out.
Lying between two wicker reindeer, garlands around their necks, was a small hunting knife, its blade free from rust, its ivory handle, fashioned into the form of a mermaid, stained red from blood. Even though it had been nearly 90 years since I had last seen it, I recognized it immediately. It had belonged to a stranger who had come to my family’s farmhouse in the Great Smoky Mountains—hundreds of miles away from this antique shop—when I was a young child. I never learned the man’s name, nor where he had come from, nor why he had decided to pay a visit to our family. I never learned where he went after he mysteriously vanished. All I know was that his knife saved my life.
I rushed into the shop. The proprietor, a balding, middle-aged man, looked up at me briefly before returning to the magazine he was reading.
“The knife in the window, where’d you get it?” I asked.
He groaned, shocked that someone had the audacity to ask him a question. “It was in some old storage unit I bought at auction.”
“Who owned that unit?”
“I don’t know. What’s it to you, anyways?”
“I’ve seen that knife before. Many years ago.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Grandpa, I think you should go home and take a nap.”
“There’s nothing you can tell me about it?”
“Not a damn thing. But since you’re so interested in it, why don’t you buy it? You can have it for $500. I’ll even throw in a sheath, what do you say, gramps?”
I didn’t even try to haggle. As I hurried home with the mysterious knife, I thought about that strange winter when I was ten. In the years that followed, I had convinced myself that some—if not all—of the bizarre events were a product of my imagination. But now I have no doubt. I know what happened to me was no dream.
***
I think it was early December when the stranger came. The maples and birches and shagbark hickories had all shed their leaves, but there was not even a dusting of snow on the ground. I was in bed when I heard the knocking. Three quick knocks, a long pause, and three more quick knocks.
My younger brothers and I rushed to our bedroom window and peered out. A haggard old man was standing outside the front door, his hair and beard long and untamed. Over a pair of overalls, he had on an oversized coat that hung loose over his emaciated frame. Despite the cold, he wore neither shoes nor a wool cap. Nor did he have a burlap sack on his back; it appeared that he had no belongings except for his threadbare clothes.
After looking at him for several seconds, I returned to bed. There was nothing unusual about a beggar. One would come around every month or so. That might not seem like a lot—given that we were in the midst of the Great Depression—but we lived on a remote plot of land in a remote corner of Western North Carolina. The closest farm, that of my Uncle John, was a mile away. Blackberry Hollow, the nearest town, was a five-mile journey. The county seat, the site of the closest train station, was nearly 30 miles away. Still, some intrepid beggars made the journey to our farmhouse, asking for food and work and shelter. My dad never had any work to offer, even during harvest time, but he always gave them a hot meal and let them sleep in the barn.
At five the next morning, when I was getting ready to milk Guinevere, our Jersey cow, my dad handed me a tin plate with hot cornbread and fatty bacon. “That’s for our guest,” he said. “Don’t know what his name is, he doesn’t speak a lick of English, but he seems like a pleasant fella.”
Wondering what someone who didn’t know English was doing in the boondocks, I headed to the barn. The stranger was sitting on a hay bale, whittling down a stick with that knife of his. He looked to be about 70, his hair and beard snow white. When he saw me, he smiled, revealing two decaying teeth.
When I got closer to him, I noticed his eyes were a violet color. Even today, I can still picture them distinctly. In all my years, I have never seen anyone with eyes like his.
As I was setting the plate down, he began to talk rapidly, but I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying. I’m not sure how to best describe his speech, except that it sounded—for lack of a better word—happy. It put me at ease. You had to be on guard around beggars, for some were unstable, violent individuals, but I had no fear around this man, even though he had a knife. I could tell he was a gentle soul.
I extended my hand to him, but he seemed baffled by the gesture. I then pointed to myself, told him my name, and pointed at him. I was hoping that even if he didn’t know English, I could still find out his name, but he just looked at me in confusion.
***
I thought that the stranger would leave that morning, like the other beggars who came around did, but he didn’t. Nor did he depart the following morning; he seemed content to stay in a smelly barn with a milk cow and two mules. My dad didn’t try to shoo him off. Through gestures, he was able to get the stranger to understand that, in exchange for room and board, he would milk Guinevere and muck out the barn. He knew what to do; he had clearly worked on farms before.
Whenever the stranger wasn’t doing his chores, he would just sit on a hay bale and whittle down a stick. I never saw him whet his knife, but it was always razor sharp.
Word of him spread around town, and, over the following days, several dozen people came to our barn and attempted to communicate with the violet-eyed man. The first two were my Uncle John and Aunt Marie. Uncle John, like most of the farmers in Western North Carolina, was not an educated man; I’d be surprised if he had more than five years of formal schooling. He certainly didn’t know any language except English. But his wife, my Aunt Marie, was from France. She met my uncle when he was serving in World War I, what was known then as the Great War. It was rumored that she had been the most renowned cabaret singer in all of Paris, that she had sung for visiting dignitaries and royalty. That was likely an exaggeration, but she was certainly a fine singer, her voice was as sweet as that of a meadowlark.
You would have thought that if anyone in our town would be able to identify the stranger’s tongue, it would have been Aunt Marie, but she just shook her head after listening to him speak. “I’ve entertained people from all over Europe, heard them converse in dozens of languages, but I have never heard anything like what’s coming out of that man’s mouth.”
The other visitors didn’t have any more luck. Ms. Campbell, the school teacher, stopped by with an atlas. She showed him a map of Europe, but he just seemed utterly confused. She then proceeded to read a long list of European cities, but he showed no reaction to their names.
Some thought that the man might be filled with the Holy Spirit and be speaking in tongues. The Reverend Arthur Duncan, the pastor of the Primitive Baptist church in Blackberry Hollow, came by one afternoon. I didn’t think he’d be of any use for he was as crazy as a loon. Every Sunday he would drone on and on for hours about how the Devil was at work in the Smokies and list the various reasons why everyone would be damned to Hell for eternity.
The righteous reverend didn’t even step foot in the barn. He just took one look at the stranger, proclaimed that he was possessed by the Evil One, and said that he should be taken to the river and drowned. Thankfully, everyone ignored the nutter.
The preacher wasn’t our strangest visitor. Ma McDermott, a local folk healer and midwife, stopped by early one Sunday morning. There were lots of rumors about that hideous old hag. Some townsfolk claimed that she had been born over 200 years ago in the Scottish Highlands. As a young girl, she had been accused of witchcraft. The villagers dragged her from her home and smeared her with tar. Knowing that she was about to suffer a painful death, she prayed to the Devil for deliverance. Just before she was set alight, the Devil swooped down from the sky and carried her across the Atlantic to the Smokies—a place where she could practice her sorcery in peace, for back then the only whites in the vicinity were the occasional trapper or trader.
The Devil required constant offerings from the woman whose life he saved. Sometimes he’d be satisfied with a rooster or a sheep, but, at other times, his thirst could only be quenched by human blood. My dad always warned me not to go deep in the woods at night, for if I did, Ma McDermott would snatch me.
Back then, I never believed the rumors. I thought it was just prattle from superstitious townsfolk, like their stories of vengeful ghosts and puckish fairies. Still, I was scared of her. When she limped into the barn that morning, her arthritic hands tightly gripping a hickory walking stick, I retreated to a far corner of the barn, wanting to get away from her but still curious whether she could communicate with the stranger.
Like everyone else, she couldn’t. She asked the stranger something in a foreign tongue—presumably Gaelic—but, like before, he showed no sign of comprehension.
On her way out of the barn, the witch’s pale yellow eyes met mine. As she mouthed something inaudible, she raised a long, bony finger and pointed it at me. I started shuddering, even though I told myself that she was just an eccentric old lady, that she had no magical powers.
I’m pretty sure that I didn’t sleep a wink that night, sure that the crone would climb through my window, take me out into the woods, and sacrifice me to the Devil.
***
One afternoon, about a week after Ma McDermott’s visit, I went out to fish at a place called Copper Falls. Carrying my cane pole over my shoulder, I headed north on a narrow dirt path that ran past our farmhouse. I followed it for about a mile until I reached the base of Johnson’s Hill. There, I turned left and walked about 50 yards into the woods until I reached the best fishing spot in all of the Smokies. The waterfall wasn’t that tall, maybe ten feet or so, but underneath it was a deep pool where bass and trout always congregated.
The falls weren’t just known for its great fishing but for a series of petroglyphs etched into nearby rocky outcroppings. Some were mundane, depictions of elk and bear and mountain lions, while others were truly bizarre. The one I remember most distinctly was easily over 6 feet tall and depicted a cyclops-like creature, antennae protruding from its grotesque head.
When I was 7 or 8, a trapper and his two coonhounds passed by me as I was fishing. In a strange accent, sort of like my Aunt Marie’s, he asked me if I knew who had made the carvings. I told him that I guessed that it was the Cherokees. He started laughing and, without saying another word, walked away.
From my fishing spot, I had a relatively clear view of the dirt path as it meandered its way down the hill. It was rare to see any travelers on it, but on that day, I saw a man in a white suit, riding a white draft horse, crest the hill. He was tremendously fat, nearly as wide as he was tall, so perfectly round that I thought that if he fell off the poor horse which, strong as it was, was struggling to support his weight, he would roll down the hill like a ball.
Nowadays, it’s not unusual to see someone that large, but during the 30s, it could only mean one thing: The circus was in town! That would have been a treat. Blackberry Hollow was so remote that I only remember it coming once during my childhood. The highlight of that show was this strange French magician, think his name was Jean-Marvot. He made my brother disappear. He draped his purple cloak over him, and the next moment he was gone. We found him an hour later in a daze, wandering a barren field two miles from the magician’s tent.
Wondering if Jean-Marvot would be amongst the showmen, I ran to the top of the hill, sure that I was going to hear calliope music. I scanned the horizon, but there was no traveling caravan of performers. I concluded that the fat man was likely just an itinerant preacher and went back to fishing.
***
When I returned home later that day, the fat man’s horse was tied up by the barn. Inside, he and my dad were sitting at the kitchen table. Not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about religion, I started heading to my room, but then I heard them mention the stranger.
It turned out that the fat man was not an itinerant preacher. He was Doc Wilcox, a physician who lived 30 miles away in the county seat. He had heard talk about a strange man who spoke a language no one could understand and had decided to investigate the rumors himself. He, like everyone else, was unable to decipher the stranger’s talk, but he was friends with a linguist who taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He was sure that his friend would finally unravel the mystery.
Doc Wilcox wanted my dad to accompany him and the stranger to the county seat and then onto Knoxville by train. I begged my dad to let me join him, for the only town I had been to was Blackberry Hollow, and that was nothing more than a general store, a one-room schoolhouse, two churches, and a dozen or so farmhouses. I told him that my brothers could take care of the farm in my absence. That was true. Since we didn’t raise tobacco, there wasn’t much to do in the winter.
After much pleading, he agreed. The next morning we hitched up the wagon and set off for the county seat. I thought that the stranger might be reluctant to come with us, but he hopped right in.
It was nearly sunset by the time we reached it. It wasn’t a big town, had maybe 2 or 3 thousand inhabitants, but I was still in awe. I had never seen a paved street before, let alone an automobile. It was clearly the stranger’s first time too, he was even more wide-eyed than me.
We spent the night at Doc Wilcox’s house, a three-story Victorian mansion painted yellow. It was just him, his wife, and their two children, but they had seven bedrooms. I remember that figure precisely, I thought it was so absurd that such a small family would have so many bedrooms. In addition, they had electricity, central heating, and indoor plumbing. All firsts for me.
Not wanting to stink on the trip into Knoxville, I took a bath that night. Back home, we bathed about once a week. We’d draw water, heat it, pour it into a galvanized tub, and then each member of the family would bathe, one after the other. Disgusting, I know. But that was rural life back then.
But there was no need to do that at Doc Wilcox’s. I just turned the faucet and hot water filled the porcelain tub. It was a magic sight for a farmboy from the boondocks.
***
The next morning, the four of us walked to the train station. I had never even seen a train before, but I knew what they were of course. The stranger apparently did not. When the train pulled in, he started trembling, like he thought a giant metal beast was charging at him. He tried to run away, but my dad held him tight, and eventually he calmed down.
The ride to Knoxville seemed to take forever, but I didn’t mind. I stared out the window the whole time, watching the landscape pass by. I had been trekking around the Smokies since I could walk, but until that train ride I never knew how vast—or how truly majestic—those mountains were.
Finally, we pulled into Knoxville’s Southern Railway Station. We boarded a street car and headed south along Gay Street—Knoxville’s main drag—towards the Tennessee River.
Knoxville was a medium-sized city. According to the 1930 Census, its population was just over 100,000, making it the 81st largest city in the country. But I felt like I had been transported to Oz and the Emerald City. Gay Street was lined by skyscrapers, some of them over ten stories in height, housing office buildings and hotels and theaters and department stores. The tallest was the Andrew Johnson Hotel, a 200-foot soaring red-brick edifice. I was sure that if I looked out from its top floor, I would be able to see our little farmhouse, nearly a hundred miles away.
At the river, the streetcar turned right, heading towards the university. At its entrance, we got off and began making our way across campus. Some of the students snickered upon seeing us, wondering what two hillbillies and a hobo were on a college campus. One of them even threw an apple core at the stranger, but he showed no anger.
After walking for about ten minutes, we arrived at a stately brick building. We climbed the marble staircase to the second story and entered a large room with intricately carved oak paneling. Seated at a long mahogany table were six men, all dressed in dark suits. Five of them were much older than my dad—the youngest of that bunch looked to be about 45—while the gentleman on the far right of the table couldn’t have been older than 25.
Introductions were made. I think Doc Wilcox’s friend was called Dr. Jones, but I’m not positive. He was sitting at the center of the table and had long white sideburns, the only member of the panel who wasn’t clean shaven. Can’t remember the names of any of the other men.
The panel tried to get the stranger to tell him his name, but, as was the case with me, they had no luck. They then proceeded to question him in what must have been at least twenty languages. I’m pretty sure one was French—I didn’t know the language, but my Aunt Marie used to sing me lullabies her native tongue—and one sounded like Gaelic—Ma McDermott, along with a handful of other elderly residents of the Smokies, spoke it—but I had no clue what the other languages were. The stranger was equally confused and just sat there in silence.
“Is he usually so reticent?” Dr. Jones asked my dad.
“I’ll let my boy answer,” my dad said. “He spends more time with him.”
“He talks around me,” I replied. I didn’t know what reticent meant and was praying that I had correctly guessed its meaning, so the professors wouldn’t think that I was an idiot.
As soon as I had finished speaking, the stranger began talking. The linguists furiously scrawled with their fountain pens, trying to transcribe his strange speech. After a few minutes, he fell silent. The panelists exchanged puzzled glances.
“Well, it’s not Romani,” Dr. Jones finally said. “When I heard about him, I was sure that he was a gypsy—some of them are fair skinned—but he’s clearly not. I don’t know the language, but it’s related to Hindi, which I’m fluent in.”
“Doesn’t sound like an Indo-European language,” another professor said. “Or any language family that I’m familiar with.”
“Could it be Polari, the showmen’s cant used in Britain?” the youngest panelist asked.
Dr. Jones looked at him like he was an idiot. “Don’t be silly. It’s heavily influenced by Italian. And unless your ears are clogged by wax, you should be able to tell that whatever language the man was speaking has no relation to any Romance language. Not to mention that there are no native Polari speakers. If he knew Polari, he would know English.”
“Basque, perhaps?” another one of the linguists asked. “It’s thought to be a pre-Indo-European language.”
Dr. Jones shrugged. “Guess it’s possible.”
One of the linguists left and returned a few minutes later with a thick, leather-bound book. They repeated a few phrases from it, but the stranger showed no understanding. They got dictionaries for several other languages, I don’t remember most of them, I think Chechen was one, and Finnic another, but I’m not 100% sure.
Next, they gave him pen and paper, but he seemed confused on what to do. I would have been shocked if he knew how to write in any language, most of the older country folks couldn’t even sign their name. Someone placed a globe in front of him. He enjoyed spinning it, but he didn’t give any indication to his place of origin.
“Perhaps we are casting too small of a geographical net,” the youngest panelist said. “I know he’s fair skinned, but I read about a tribe in a remote corner of northwestern India that is descended from Alexander the Great’s troops.”
Dr. Jones laughed. “Perhaps he speaks Martian. Or maybe he’s an Atlantean, that could explain his violet eyes. No, gentlemen, this man is mad. I know it sounds like he’s speaking a natural language—there’s a rhythm to his speech, his voice rises and falls as he speaks. And there are short pauses between what are presumably words and longer pauses between what are presumably sentences. But no, I think this man is spewing gibberish. Please excuse me, I’ll be back.”
***
A few minutes later, Dr. Jones returned, carrying a large box. “Get ready to record, gentlemen,” he said. “We’re finally going to get to the bottom of this.”
Inside the box were cards with illustrations of various objects. The first one that Dr. Jones held up was of an apple. I thought that the stranger wouldn’t be able to comprehend what they were asking of him, but he seemed able to and the panelists scribbled down his reply. Sadly, I don’t remember what it was. I remember much of what the linguists said, even though they were using technical jargon I was completely unfamiliar with, but I can’t recall a single example of the stranger’s tongue.
Next up was a picture of a cow. Another reply, another scribble of pens. Then there was an illustration of a pineapple. The stranger looked at it for several seconds, before shrugging and saying something, which I would guess translated to “I don’t know.”
This went on and on. Some of the cards just had solid blocks of color. Some had circles in varying quantities. One had stick figures depicting a mom, dad, and child. Dr. Jones would point at one of them, but the stranger appeared confused, repeating his “I don’t know” response. Dr. Jones pointed to my dad and then to me, but the stranger was never able to comprehend what the academician was getting at.
After finishing the stack, Dr. Jones shuffled the cards and showed him about twenty of them for a second time.
“He gave the same responses the second time around, didn’t he?” Dr. Jones asked.
The other linguists nodded.
Dr. Jones examined his colleagues’ notes for several minutes. “Well,” he said, “My initial hypothesis was wrong. I think he is speaking an actual language. His responses to the cards were not some random vocalizations. The number system that he employed was clearly base 10. For example, when I showed him a card with seventeen circles, he responded with ‘ten and seven.’ However, he used distinct words for eleven and twelve though, a trait found in Germanic languages.”
“I also noticed that he gave the same response for blue and green. And for fingers and toes,” the youngest linguist said.
Dr. Jones nodded. “The fingers and toes isn’t surprising. Germanic and Finnic languages commonly make the distinction, but many others don’t. Blue and green is a little more surprising. It’s somewhat common for a language not to make that distinction—Korean and Japanese don’t, for example. But based on the literature I’ve read, as languages develop, they acquire separate terms for blue and green before adding words for purple, pink, orange, gray, and brown. But our subject provided distinct responses when shown those colors. Dr. Wilcox, do you think he is possibly blue-green colorblind?”
“I’d need to consult my books,” Doc Wilcox said. “I’ve never heard of it, the most common form of colorblindness is red-green, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“It’s quite bizarre,” Dr. Jones said. “Although I think this man is speaking a natural language, I don’t believe it’s his native tongue. I think he is demented. He was probably a missionary to some remote tribe. For some unknown reason, in his senescence, he has lost his use of English and can only speak in that other tongue.”
“That sounds plausible,” one of the linguists said. “I’ve got a few observations that will hopefully narrow down what language he’s speaking. He didn’t recognize a pineapple, which is indigenous to South America, and for the citrus fruits — which are native to parts of Asia, Australia, and Melanesia—he provided a single response, distinct from his “I don’t know” response. I think he recognized that they were fruit, but didn’t have distinct terms for the different varieties. In addition, he was confused upon seeing the pictures of the elephant and the kangaroo. If I had to guess, I’d imagine that the language he is speaking is native to North America or Siberia.”
“He had terms for cattle and sheep though,” the youngest linguist said. “Those aren’t native to North America—”
“They were introduced hundreds of years ago by the Spanish,” Dr. Jones said. “Nearly all of the tribes, except for maybe some remote Inuit ones, have words for them. Siberia seems plausible, but most of the missionary work there was done by Russians, and this fellow doesn’t look Russian. I think it’s safe to assume he is speaking one of North America’s indigenous languages.”
The other panelists nodded in agreement.
Dr. Jones turned to Doc Wilcox. “I’ve got a colleague who’s attending a conference in Boston right now. He’ll be back in a few days. His specialty is the autochthonous tongues north of Mexico. He’s not fluent in all of them of course—think there are over 300 if I remember correctly—but he should be able to identify at least the language family he’s speaking. Do you mind lodging him at your place till my colleague returns? I would put him up in a hotel here, but the department has no funding for it.”
Doc Wilcox nodded. “No problem at all, I’ve got plenty of extra space.”
My dad smiled when he heard this. He was a generous man, but he didn’t want to be stuck with the stranger forever.
“Lovely. And if my colleague can’t identify it, we can call the *Knoxville News Sentinel* and have them take a photo of him. I’m sure someone will recognize him. If he has no family to take him in, he’ll probably have to go to a home for the aged. It’s not safe for him to be wandering about the wilderness, with winter coming. He’ll surely freeze to death.”
***
We left the university and took the street car back to Gay Street. It was late in the afternoon, and there was no train back to North Carolina until the next morning.
We stopped at the counter of a five and dime to eat. Having not eaten since breakfast that morning, I was famished. It being the first time I was ever in an eatery, I remember exactly what I ordered: malted milk with strawberry syrup, a plate of liver and onions served with string beans and creamed peas and fried potatoes, and, for dessert, three slices of cherry pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. It was so delicious, gobbled it all up.
I remember that Doc Wilcox ordered grilled barracuda. I had never heard of barracuda, but he insisted that its meat was sublime. He was gracious enough to let me take a bite. Tasted fine, but didn’t come close to the trout I caught at Copper Falls.
***
After supper, we went to the Andrew Johnson Hotel, where Doc Wilcox had reserved us rooms. I trembled the entire elevator ride up to the 17th floor, sure that it would plummet and send me to my death.
The next morning we headed to the station and boarded our train. About an hour into the journey, the stranger gestured that he needed to use the bathroom. Doc Wilcox pointed to where it was, about twenty feet in front of us.
Thirty minutes later, he still hadn’t returned.
“I think you should check on him,” Doc Wilcox said to me. “He’s probably sick, last night’s meal was surely too rich for someone who’s not used to it.”
I went to the bathroom and knocked. No response. I tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t.
The bathroom was empty. There was a small window, about four feet off the ground, that was open. It seemed too small for him to have crawled through, but there was no other explanation. One of us would have seen him if he had walked out.
I ran back with the news. Doc Wilcox gasped, but my dad remained calm. “Son,” he said, “people like him don’t stick around in one place very long.”
“But wouldn’t he hurt himself jumping from the train?” I asked. For some reason, even though I couldn’t communicate with him, I had grown fond of the man.
“Just because he doesn’t speak English doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. I’m sure he waited till it slowed down as it approached a station. He’s fine, don’t worry.”
Despite my dad’s assurances, I was worried sick. I said a silent prayer for the violet-eyed stranger.
***
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived back in North Carolina. Doc Wilcox offered to let us stay the night at his place, but my dad wanted to get back to the farm. I was a little nervous about traveling at night, but my dad assured me everything would be fine. According to him, mules had good night vision. Plus, the moon would be nearly full.
We got our mules from the livery and set off. We probably made only ten miles before nightfall. But my dad and his mules, even though they went to the county seat only once a year or so, seemed to know their way. Relaxed, I curled up and fell asleep.
I was awoken by the howling of wolves. I jolted up and looked around. We were cresting Johnson’s Hill, only a mile from home.
“It’s OK,” my dad said to me. “They’re far off in the distance, a few miles away at least.”
They sounded much closer. In fact, they sounded like they were only a few hundred yards away, down by my fishing spot at Copper Falls.
“Relax,” my dad said, sensing that I was still afraid. “They’re skittish things, been hunted nearly to extinction in these parts. The few that remain in these mountains know how to avoid humans. They’re not going to attack a wagon.”
As we descended the hill, I looked towards the falls, sure that I would see a pack of gigantic wolves ready to lunge at us. There weren’t any, but there was a campfire, and, in the light of the flames, I saw an old woman dancing.
I pointed it out to my dad but he just kept his eyes on the road. “Don’t fret, son,” he said. “Just some hobos. The fire will keep the wolves away. Nothing to be afraid of.”
I wanted to avert my eyes from the flames, but I couldn’t. As we neared the bottom of the hill, I saw clearly that the crone who was dancing was Ma McDermott. Usually, the arthritic cripple could barely move, but that night her feet were moving like the ground was on fire. As she danced, she began to sing in Gaelic, her voice harsh and raspy.
Suddenly, the petroglyphs started glowing red. The hideous carvings—the cyclopses and the ogres and the other monstrous beings—left their rocky confines and joined hands with the witch. They were still 2-dimensional lines, with no substance to their forms, but they were alive.
I tried to call out to my dad, but my throat was swollen shut. As the witch danced in the night, white smoke began rising from the campfire, rising above the bare trees and high into the night sky, coalescing into the form of a gigantic wolf’s head.
From the heavens, it let out a thunderous howl.
My dad seemed unable to see or hear it, but the mules sure could. Even though they were tired from the long journey, they took off galloping.
I closed my eyes, sure that at any moment a band of smoke wolves would attack our wagon, but we made it home safely.
“Wonder what spooked the mules?” my dad asked as we were leading them into the barn.
“You didn’t see the wolf’s head in the sky?” I asked.
He laughed. “Son, you were just dreaming. It’s been a long couple of days. Get some sleep.”
It was then that I saw the stranger’s knife, lying on the hay bale where he always sat, its blade glinting in the moonlight. As my dad was leaving the barn, I pocketed it. We had a shotgun and two hunting rifle at home, but I had a feeling that those weapons would be powerless against Ma McDermott and her smoke wolves. However, I thought the stranger’s knife might prove effective.
***
Neither Ma McDermott nor her wolves visited our farm that night. Or the night after. Or the one after that. I started to believe that I had dreamt the whole thing. However, I still did not go back to Copper Falls. Instead, I fished the other brooks and creeks near our farmhouse. But the fish weren’t biting.
After about a month of subpar fishing, I gained the courage to go back to the falls. It wasn’t an ideal day for fishing—it was freezing and a strong wind was blowing in from the south—but still I went. I had an itch that could only be scratched by some good fishing.
I took the stranger’s knife with me. Even though I had almost convinced myself that it was a dream, having it gave me comfort.
Shortly after sunset, I saw Rev. Duncan, the crazy Baptist preacher, walk down Johnson’s Hill, carrying a small burlap sack that was tied shut with twine. I hid behind some bushes, knowing that if he saw me, the crazy man would likely accuse me of sorcery.
I thought that he would continue down the path, but instead, upon reaching the bottom of the hill, he headed into the woods. He stopped where I had just been standing—where I had left my cane pole—and looked around. Thankfully, the ground was frozen solid and I hadn’t left any footprints.
He began walking around, peering into the bushes, coming within ten feet of me. I was sure that he was going to hear my rapidly beating heart, but somehow he didn’t. After searching the area, he returned to where I had been fishing, set the burlap sack down, took out a gold pocket watch from his overcoat, and looked up at the hill.
I considered running away, but I knew Rev. Duncan would likely catch me. And who knows what he would do then.
I prayed that he would leave. I stayed where I was behind the bushes, stayed until the only light in the sky was from the moon and stars, but the preacher did not go anywhere. In my right hand, I gripped the stranger’s knife, ready to use in case he found me.
After God knows how long, the person Rev. Duncan was waiting for finally arrived. The full moon illuminated Ma McDermott as she slowly descended the hill, her tall hickory stick in her right hand, a dagger in her left.
I thought that the reverend had lured Ma McDermott to the falls under false pretenses, that he planned to kill her, but when she finally made it to where the preacher was standing, they greeted each other like old friends.
“I think there’s someone nearby,” Rev. Duncan said.
The witch smiled. “Then there will be two sacrifices tonight.”
Unlike the preacher, she had no trouble finding me. Her eyes soon fixed on the bush I was hiding behind. “Come out, little boy,” she said as she cackled.
I lunged at her, knife raised, but she pointed her hickory stick at me and recited an incantation.
I was stopped dead in my tracks. I was a statue, almost completely frozen. I could still see, could still hear, could even blink and move my eyeballs, but, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t even wiggle my toes.
The witch hobbled over to me and scratched my cheek with one of her overgrown, yellow fingernails. “What such a pleasant surprise,” she said. She turned to the preacher. “We’ll save him for last. Let’s get to work.”
As the witch sang a song in Gaelic, the preacher knelt down by the creek and made diminutive effigies from the river mud, each one about six inches tall, using tiny twigs for their arms and pebbles for their eyes. When he had about ten of these humanlike figurines, he began positioning them in a circle.
As he was arranging them, the thing inside the burlap sack started moving. At first, I thought it was a chicken they were going to sacrifice, but then I heard a cry like that of a baby from inside.
“Hurry,” the witch said to the preacher, who was flaking off pieces of a pine stump to use as fire starter. “Just get some twigs, I can set them alight.”
The preacher gathered some sticks and set them down in the circle. The witch raised her stick and they were instantly set ablaze. As the wood began to burn, the figurines the preacher had made began walking slowly around the circle.
The witch resumed singing, faster than before. The preacher untied the burlap sack and reached into it. I was expecting him to pull out a baby, but he didn’t.
It was a fairy, about a foot in height, dressed in a roughspun moss-colored garment. There were no wings on his back, but it was clear as day that he wasn’t an infant. His ears were sharply pointed, his face was deeply wrinkled, and his beard long and red.
The fairy tried to free himself, but his hands and feet had been bound with coarse rope. He looked at me, as if begging for help. But I was unable to move.
As the preacher held the fairy tight, the witch sauntered over to him. She raised her dagger high in the air. As she was reciting an incantation, the stranger’s knife left my hand.
I hadn’t thrown it, I was still frozen. But the knife was somehow flying through the air, curving towards the neck of Ma McDermott. Neither she nor the preacher had any idea what was coming. She was lowering the blade when the stranger’s knife embedded itself in the witch’s neck. She staggered backwards, dropped the dagger, and collapsed.
***
As the witch lay dying, blood pouring from her neck, the preacher dropped the fairy and fled up Johnson’s Hill. A few seconds later, Ma McDermott drew her final breath.
Almost immediately, everything returned to normal. The dancing effigies fell to the ground and the white smoke, which had been coalescing into the form of a wolf’s head, was quickly dispersed by the wind. I looked behind me, making sure the monstrous petroglyphs were in their rocky confines. They were.
With the witch’s dagger, I freed the fairy, who was seemingly unharmed. He said something to me before scampering off in the woods. It wasn't in English. Nor was it in the language the stranger spoke. If I had to guess I would say it was Gaelic. It was similar to the language Ma McDermott had been singing in.
I left the witch where she lay, the stranger’s knife still embedded in her neck, and hurried home. My dad asked me where I had been. I told him that I had run into a friend while I was out fishing and that he had invited me over to his farm for dinner. I never told him what happened at Copper Falls. I never told anyone.
That Sunday, the preacher wasn’t at the pulpit. The gossip was that he had run off with some Jezebel. There was also talk about how Ma McDermott had been murdered. Still, despite this, I tried to convince myself that it was all a dream.
And, as time went on, I believed it more and more. Until today. Until the stranger’s knife, for some reason, entered my life again.
#entertainment
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This morning, as I have done every day for the past thirty years, I walked the mile from my house to the town square. It’s a pleasant walk, first down a quiet residential street lined by stately Victorians and shaded by arching elms. Then, after about 3/4 of a mile, I turn right onto Waters Street and continue on it until I reach the town square. At its center is a 19th-century Neoclassical courthouse, which, although no case has been heard in it in nearly fifty years, still stands proud.
There are over a dozen antique shops and art galleries on the square, catering to the thousands of tourists who invade the town on summer weekends and at Christmastime. I almost never go inside them; most of what they sell is tacky, overpriced junk. But today, when I saw what was in the window of Miller’s Antiques, my poor heart almost gave out.
Lying between two wicker reindeer, garlands around their necks, was a small hunting knife, its blade free from rust, its ivory handle, fashioned into the form of a mermaid, stained red from blood. Even though it had been nearly 90 years since I had last seen it, I recognized it immediately. It had belonged to a stranger who had come to my family’s farmhouse in the Great Smoky Mountains—hundreds of miles away from this antique shop—when I was a young child. I never learned the man’s name, nor where he had come from, nor why he had decided to pay a visit to our family. I never learned where he went after he mysteriously vanished. All I know was that his knife saved my life.
I rushed into the shop. The proprietor, a balding, middle-aged man, looked up at me briefly before returning to the magazine he was reading.
“The knife in the window, where’d you get it?” I asked.
He groaned, shocked that someone had the audacity to ask him a question. “It was in some old storage unit I bought at auction.”
“Who owned that unit?”
“I don’t know. What’s it to you, anyways?”
“I’ve seen that knife before. Many years ago.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Grandpa, I think you should go home and take a nap.”
“There’s nothing you can tell me about it?”
“Not a damn thing. But since you’re so interested in it, why don’t you buy it? You can have it for $500. I’ll even throw in a sheath, what do you say, gramps?”
I didn’t even try to haggle. As I hurried home with the mysterious knife, I thought about that strange winter when I was ten. In the years that followed, I had convinced myself that some—if not all—of the bizarre events were a product of my imagination. But now I have no doubt. I know what happened to me was no dream.
***
I think it was early December when the stranger came. The maples and birches and shagbark hickories had all shed their leaves, but there was not even a dusting of snow on the ground. I was in bed when I heard the knocking. Three quick knocks, a long pause, and three more quick knocks.
My younger brothers and I rushed to our bedroom window and peered out. A haggard old man was standing outside the front door, his hair and beard long and untamed. Over a pair of overalls, he had on an oversized coat that hung loose over his emaciated frame. Despite the cold, he wore neither shoes nor a wool cap. Nor did he have a burlap sack on his back; it appeared that he had no belongings except for his threadbare clothes.
After looking at him for several seconds, I returned to bed. There was nothing unusual about a beggar. One would come around every month or so. That might not seem like a lot—given that we were in the midst of the Great Depression—but we lived on a remote plot of land in a remote corner of Western North Carolina. The closest farm, that of my Uncle John, was a mile away. Blackberry Hollow, the nearest town, was a five-mile journey. The county seat, the site of the closest train station, was nearly 30 miles away. Still, some intrepid beggars made the journey to our farmhouse, asking for food and work and shelter. My dad never had any work to offer, even during harvest time, but he always gave them a hot meal and let them sleep in the barn.
At five the next morning, when I was getting ready to milk Guinevere, our Jersey cow, my dad handed me a tin plate with hot cornbread and fatty bacon. “That’s for our guest,” he said. “Don’t know what his name is, he doesn’t speak a lick of English, but he seems like a pleasant fella.”
Wondering what someone who didn’t know English was doing in the boondocks, I headed to the barn. The stranger was sitting on a hay bale, whittling down a stick with that knife of his. He looked to be about 70, his hair and beard snow white. When he saw me, he smiled, revealing two decaying teeth.
When I got closer to him, I noticed his eyes were a violet color. Even today, I can still picture them distinctly. In all my years, I have never seen anyone with eyes like his.
As I was setting the plate down, he began to talk rapidly, but I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying. I’m not sure how to best describe his speech, except that it sounded—for lack of a better word—happy. It put me at ease. You had to be on guard around beggars, for some were unstable, violent individuals, but I had no fear around this man, even though he had a knife. I could tell he was a gentle soul.
I extended my hand to him, but he seemed baffled by the gesture. I then pointed to myself, told him my name, and pointed at him. I was hoping that even if he didn’t know English, I could still find out his name, but he just looked at me in confusion.
***
I thought that the stranger would leave that morning, like the other beggars who came around did, but he didn’t. Nor did he depart the following morning; he seemed content to stay in a smelly barn with a milk cow and two mules. My dad didn’t try to shoo him off. Through gestures, he was able to get the stranger to understand that, in exchange for room and board, he would milk Guinevere and muck out the barn. He knew what to do; he had clearly worked on farms before.
Whenever the stranger wasn’t doing his chores, he would just sit on a hay bale and whittle down a stick. I never saw him whet his knife, but it was always razor sharp.
Word of him spread around town, and, over the following days, several dozen people came to our barn and attempted to communicate with the violet-eyed man. The first two were my Uncle John and Aunt Marie. Uncle John, like most of the farmers in Western North Carolina, was not an educated man; I’d be surprised if he had more than five years of formal schooling. He certainly didn’t know any language except English. But his wife, my Aunt Marie, was from France. She met my uncle when he was serving in World War I, what was known then as the Great War. It was rumored that she had been the most renowned cabaret singer in all of Paris, that she had sung for visiting dignitaries and royalty. That was likely an exaggeration, but she was certainly a fine singer, her voice was as sweet as that of a meadowlark.
You would have thought that if anyone in our town would be able to identify the stranger’s tongue, it would have been Aunt Marie, but she just shook her head after listening to him speak. “I’ve entertained people from all over Europe, heard them converse in dozens of languages, but I have never heard anything like what’s coming out of that man’s mouth.”
The other visitors didn’t have any more luck. Ms. Campbell, the school teacher, stopped by with an atlas. She showed him a map of Europe, but he just seemed utterly confused. She then proceeded to read a long list of European cities, but he showed no reaction to their names.
Some thought that the man might be filled with the Holy Spirit and be speaking in tongues. The Reverend Arthur Duncan, the pastor of the Primitive Baptist church in Blackberry Hollow, came by one afternoon. I didn’t think he’d be of any use for he was as crazy as a loon. Every Sunday he would drone on and on for hours about how the Devil was at work in the Smokies and list the various reasons why everyone would be damned to Hell for eternity.
The righteous reverend didn’t even step foot in the barn. He just took one look at the stranger, proclaimed that he was possessed by the Evil One, and said that he should be taken to the river and drowned. Thankfully, everyone ignored the nutter.
The preacher wasn’t our strangest visitor. Ma McDermott, a local folk healer and midwife, stopped by early one Sunday morning. There were lots of rumors about that hideous old hag. Some townsfolk claimed that she had been born over 200 years ago in the Scottish Highlands. As a young girl, she had been accused of witchcraft. The villagers dragged her from her home and smeared her with tar. Knowing that she was about to suffer a painful death, she prayed to the Devil for deliverance. Just before she was set alight, the Devil swooped down from the sky and carried her across the Atlantic to the Smokies—a place where she could practice her sorcery in peace, for back then the only whites in the vicinity were the occasional trapper or trader.
The Devil required constant offerings from the woman whose life he saved. Sometimes he’d be satisfied with a rooster or a sheep, but, at other times, his thirst could only be quenched by human blood. My dad always warned me not to go deep in the woods at night, for if I did, Ma McDermott would snatch me.
Back then, I never believed the rumors. I thought it was just prattle from superstitious townsfolk, like their stories of vengeful ghosts and puckish fairies. Still, I was scared of her. When she limped into the barn that morning, her arthritic hands tightly gripping a hickory walking stick, I retreated to a far corner of the barn, wanting to get away from her but still curious whether she could communicate with the stranger.
Like everyone else, she couldn’t. She asked the stranger something in a foreign tongue—presumably Gaelic—but, like before, he showed no sign of comprehension.
On her way out of the barn, the witch’s pale yellow eyes met mine. As she mouthed something inaudible, she raised a long, bony finger and pointed it at me. I started shuddering, even though I told myself that she was just an eccentric old lady, that she had no magical powers.
I’m pretty sure that I didn’t sleep a wink that night, sure that the crone would climb through my window, take me out into the woods, and sacrifice me to the Devil.
***
One afternoon, about a week after Ma McDermott’s visit, I went out to fish at a place called Copper Falls. Carrying my cane pole over my shoulder, I headed north on a narrow dirt path that ran past our farmhouse. I followed it for about a mile until I reached the base of Johnson’s Hill. There, I turned left and walked about 50 yards into the woods until I reached the best fishing spot in all of the Smokies. The waterfall wasn’t that tall, maybe ten feet or so, but underneath it was a deep pool where bass and trout always congregated.
The falls weren’t just known for its great fishing but for a series of petroglyphs etched into nearby rocky outcroppings. Some were mundane, depictions of elk and bear and mountain lions, while others were truly bizarre. The one I remember most distinctly was easily over 6 feet tall and depicted a cyclops-like creature, antennae protruding from its grotesque head.
When I was 7 or 8, a trapper and his two coonhounds passed by me as I was fishing. In a strange accent, sort of like my Aunt Marie’s, he asked me if I knew who had made the carvings. I told him that I guessed that it was the Cherokees. He started laughing and, without saying another word, walked away.
From my fishing spot, I had a relatively clear view of the dirt path as it meandered its way down the hill. It was rare to see any travelers on it, but on that day, I saw a man in a white suit, riding a white draft horse, crest the hill. He was tremendously fat, nearly as wide as he was tall, so perfectly round that I thought that if he fell off the poor horse which, strong as it was, was struggling to support his weight, he would roll down the hill like a ball.
Nowadays, it’s not unusual to see someone that large, but during the 30s, it could only mean one thing: The circus was in town! That would have been a treat. Blackberry Hollow was so remote that I only remember it coming once during my childhood. The highlight of that show was this strange French magician, think his name was Jean-Marvot. He made my brother disappear. He draped his purple cloak over him, and the next moment he was gone. We found him an hour later in a daze, wandering a barren field two miles from the magician’s tent.
Wondering if Jean-Marvot would be amongst the showmen, I ran to the top of the hill, sure that I was going to hear calliope music. I scanned the horizon, but there was no traveling caravan of performers. I concluded that the fat man was likely just an itinerant preacher and went back to fishing.
***
When I returned home later that day, the fat man’s horse was tied up by the barn. Inside, he and my dad were sitting at the kitchen table. Not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about religion, I started heading to my room, but then I heard them mention the stranger.
It turned out that the fat man was not an itinerant preacher. He was Doc Wilcox, a physician who lived 30 miles away in the county seat. He had heard talk about a strange man who spoke a language no one could understand and had decided to investigate the rumors himself. He, like everyone else, was unable to decipher the stranger’s talk, but he was friends with a linguist who taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He was sure that his friend would finally unravel the mystery.
Doc Wilcox wanted my dad to accompany him and the stranger to the county seat and then onto Knoxville by train. I begged my dad to let me join him, for the only town I had been to was Blackberry Hollow, and that was nothing more than a general store, a one-room schoolhouse, two churches, and a dozen or so farmhouses. I told him that my brothers could take care of the farm in my absence. That was true. Since we didn’t raise tobacco, there wasn’t much to do in the winter.
After much pleading, he agreed. The next morning we hitched up the wagon and set off for the county seat. I thought that the stranger might be reluctant to come with us, but he hopped right in.
It was nearly sunset by the time we reached it. It wasn’t a big town, had maybe 2 or 3 thousand inhabitants, but I was still in awe. I had never seen a paved street before, let alone an automobile. It was clearly the stranger’s first time too, he was even more wide-eyed than me.
We spent the night at Doc Wilcox’s house, a three-story Victorian mansion painted yellow. It was just him, his wife, and their two children, but they had seven bedrooms. I remember that figure precisely, I thought it was so absurd that such a small family would have so many bedrooms. In addition, they had electricity, central heating, and indoor plumbing. All firsts for me.
Not wanting to stink on the trip into Knoxville, I took a bath that night. Back home, we bathed about once a week. We’d draw water, heat it, pour it into a galvanized tub, and then each member of the family would bathe, one after the other. Disgusting, I know. But that was rural life back then.
But there was no need to do that at Doc Wilcox’s. I just turned the faucet and hot water filled the porcelain tub. It was a magic sight for a farmboy from the boondocks.
***
The next morning, the four of us walked to the train station. I had never even seen a train before, but I knew what they were of course. The stranger apparently did not. When the train pulled in, he started trembling, like he thought a giant metal beast was charging at him. He tried to run away, but my dad held him tight, and eventually he calmed down.
The ride to Knoxville seemed to take forever, but I didn’t mind. I stared out the window the whole time, watching the landscape pass by. I had been trekking around the Smokies since I could walk, but until that train ride I never knew how vast—or how truly majestic—those mountains were.
Finally, we pulled into Knoxville’s Southern Railway Station. We boarded a street car and headed south along Gay Street—Knoxville’s main drag—towards the Tennessee River.
Knoxville was a medium-sized city. According to the 1930 Census, its population was just over 100,000, making it the 81st largest city in the country. But I felt like I had been transported to Oz and the Emerald City. Gay Street was lined by skyscrapers, some of them over ten stories in height, housing office buildings and hotels and theaters and department stores. The tallest was the Andrew Johnson Hotel, a 200-foot soaring red-brick edifice. I was sure that if I looked out from its top floor, I would be able to see our little farmhouse, nearly a hundred miles away.
At the river, the streetcar turned right, heading towards the university. At its entrance, we got off and began making our way across campus. Some of the students snickered upon seeing us, wondering what two hillbillies and a hobo were on a college campus. One of them even threw an apple core at the stranger, but he showed no anger.
After walking for about ten minutes, we arrived at a stately brick building. We climbed the marble staircase to the second story and entered a large room with intricately carved oak paneling. Seated at a long mahogany table were six men, all dressed in dark suits. Five of them were much older than my dad—the youngest of that bunch looked to be about 45—while the gentleman on the far right of the table couldn’t have been older than 25.
Introductions were made. I think Doc Wilcox’s friend was called Dr. Jones, but I’m not positive. He was sitting at the center of the table and had long white sideburns, the only member of the panel who wasn’t clean shaven. Can’t remember the names of any of the other men.
The panel tried to get the stranger to tell him his name, but, as was the case with me, they had no luck. They then proceeded to question him in what must have been at least twenty languages. I’m pretty sure one was French—I didn’t know the language, but my Aunt Marie used to sing me lullabies her native tongue—and one sounded like Gaelic—Ma McDermott, along with a handful of other elderly residents of the Smokies, spoke it—but I had no clue what the other languages were. The stranger was equally confused and just sat there in silence.
“Is he usually so reticent?” Dr. Jones asked my dad.
“I’ll let my boy answer,” my dad said. “He spends more time with him.”
“He talks around me,” I replied. I didn’t know what reticent meant and was praying that I had correctly guessed its meaning, so the professors wouldn’t think that I was an idiot.
As soon as I had finished speaking, the stranger began talking. The linguists furiously scrawled with their fountain pens, trying to transcribe his strange speech. After a few minutes, he fell silent. The panelists exchanged puzzled glances.
“Well, it’s not Romani,” Dr. Jones finally said. “When I heard about him, I was sure that he was a gypsy—some of them are fair skinned—but he’s clearly not. I don’t know the language, but it’s related to Hindi, which I’m fluent in.”
“Doesn’t sound like an Indo-European language,” another professor said. “Or any language family that I’m familiar with.”
“Could it be Polari, the showmen’s cant used in Britain?” the youngest panelist asked.
Dr. Jones looked at him like he was an idiot. “Don’t be silly. It’s heavily influenced by Italian. And unless your ears are clogged by wax, you should be able to tell that whatever language the man was speaking has no relation to any Romance language. Not to mention that there are no native Polari speakers. If he knew Polari, he would know English.”
“Basque, perhaps?” another one of the linguists asked. “It’s thought to be a pre-Indo-European language.”
Dr. Jones shrugged. “Guess it’s possible.”
One of the linguists left and returned a few minutes later with a thick, leather-bound book. They repeated a few phrases from it, but the stranger showed no understanding. They got dictionaries for several other languages, I don’t remember most of them, I think Chechen was one, and Finnic another, but I’m not 100% sure.
Next, they gave him pen and paper, but he seemed confused on what to do. I would have been shocked if he knew how to write in any language, most of the older country folks couldn’t even sign their name. Someone placed a globe in front of him. He enjoyed spinning it, but he didn’t give any indication to his place of origin.
“Perhaps we are casting too small of a geographical net,” the youngest panelist said. “I know he’s fair skinned, but I read about a tribe in a remote corner of northwestern India that is descended from Alexander the Great’s troops.”
Dr. Jones laughed. “Perhaps he speaks Martian. Or maybe he’s an Atlantean, that could explain his violet eyes. No, gentlemen, this man is mad. I know it sounds like he’s speaking a natural language—there’s a rhythm to his speech, his voice rises and falls as he speaks. And there are short pauses between what are presumably words and longer pauses between what are presumably sentences. But no, I think this man is spewing gibberish. Please excuse me, I’ll be back.”
***
A few minutes later, Dr. Jones returned, carrying a large box. “Get ready to record, gentlemen,” he said. “We’re finally going to get to the bottom of this.”
Inside the box were cards with illustrations of various objects. The first one that Dr. Jones held up was of an apple. I thought that the stranger wouldn’t be able to comprehend what they were asking of him, but he seemed able to and the panelists scribbled down his reply. Sadly, I don’t remember what it was. I remember much of what the linguists said, even though they were using technical jargon I was completely unfamiliar with, but I can’t recall a single example of the stranger’s tongue.
Next up was a picture of a cow. Another reply, another scribble of pens. Then there was an illustration of a pineapple. The stranger looked at it for several seconds, before shrugging and saying something, which I would guess translated to “I don’t know.”
This went on and on. Some of the cards just had solid blocks of color. Some had circles in varying quantities. One had stick figures depicting a mom, dad, and child. Dr. Jones would point at one of them, but the stranger appeared confused, repeating his “I don’t know” response. Dr. Jones pointed to my dad and then to me, but the stranger was never able to comprehend what the academician was getting at.
After finishing the stack, Dr. Jones shuffled the cards and showed him about twenty of them for a second time.
“He gave the same responses the second time around, didn’t he?” Dr. Jones asked.
The other linguists nodded.
Dr. Jones examined his colleagues’ notes for several minutes. “Well,” he said, “My initial hypothesis was wrong. I think he is speaking an actual language. His responses to the cards were not some random vocalizations. The number system that he employed was clearly base 10. For example, when I showed him a card with seventeen circles, he responded with ‘ten and seven.’ However, he used distinct words for eleven and twelve though, a trait found in Germanic languages.”
“I also noticed that he gave the same response for blue and green. And for fingers and toes,” the youngest linguist said.
Dr. Jones nodded. “The fingers and toes isn’t surprising. Germanic and Finnic languages commonly make the distinction, but many others don’t. Blue and green is a little more surprising. It’s somewhat common for a language not to make that distinction—Korean and Japanese don’t, for example. But based on the literature I’ve read, as languages develop, they acquire separate terms for blue and green before adding words for purple, pink, orange, gray, and brown. But our subject provided distinct responses when shown those colors. Dr. Wilcox, do you think he is possibly blue-green colorblind?”
“I’d need to consult my books,” Doc Wilcox said. “I’ve never heard of it, the most common form of colorblindness is red-green, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“It’s quite bizarre,” Dr. Jones said. “Although I think this man is speaking a natural language, I don’t believe it’s his native tongue. I think he is demented. He was probably a missionary to some remote tribe. For some unknown reason, in his senescence, he has lost his use of English and can only speak in that other tongue.”
“That sounds plausible,” one of the linguists said. “I’ve got a few observations that will hopefully narrow down what language he’s speaking. He didn’t recognize a pineapple, which is indigenous to South America, and for the citrus fruits — which are native to parts of Asia, Australia, and Melanesia—he provided a single response, distinct from his “I don’t know” response. I think he recognized that they were fruit, but didn’t have distinct terms for the different varieties. In addition, he was confused upon seeing the pictures of the elephant and the kangaroo. If I had to guess, I’d imagine that the language he is speaking is native to North America or Siberia.”
“He had terms for cattle and sheep though,” the youngest linguist said. “Those aren’t native to North America—”
“They were introduced hundreds of years ago by the Spanish,” Dr. Jones said. “Nearly all of the tribes, except for maybe some remote Inuit ones, have words for them. Siberia seems plausible, but most of the missionary work there was done by Russians, and this fellow doesn’t look Russian. I think it’s safe to assume he is speaking one of North America’s indigenous languages.”
The other panelists nodded in agreement.
Dr. Jones turned to Doc Wilcox. “I’ve got a colleague who’s attending a conference in Boston right now. He’ll be back in a few days. His specialty is the autochthonous tongues north of Mexico. He’s not fluent in all of them of course—think there are over 300 if I remember correctly—but he should be able to identify at least the language family he’s speaking. Do you mind lodging him at your place till my colleague returns? I would put him up in a hotel here, but the department has no funding for it.”
Doc Wilcox nodded. “No problem at all, I’ve got plenty of extra space.”
My dad smiled when he heard this. He was a generous man, but he didn’t want to be stuck with the stranger forever.
“Lovely. And if my colleague can’t identify it, we can call the *Knoxville News Sentinel* and have them take a photo of him. I’m sure someone will recognize him. If he has no family to take him in, he’ll probably have to go to a home for the aged. It’s not safe for him to be wandering about the wilderness, with winter coming. He’ll surely freeze to death.”
***
We left the university and took the street car back to Gay Street. It was late in the afternoon, and there was no train back to North Carolina until the next morning.
We stopped at the counter of a five and dime to eat. Having not eaten since breakfast that morning, I was famished. It being the first time I was ever in an eatery, I remember exactly what I ordered: malted milk with strawberry syrup, a plate of liver and onions served with string beans and creamed peas and fried potatoes, and, for dessert, three slices of cherry pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. It was so delicious, gobbled it all up.
I remember that Doc Wilcox ordered grilled barracuda. I had never heard of barracuda, but he insisted that its meat was sublime. He was gracious enough to let me take a bite. Tasted fine, but didn’t come close to the trout I caught at Copper Falls.
***
After supper, we went to the Andrew Johnson Hotel, where Doc Wilcox had reserved us rooms. I trembled the entire elevator ride up to the 17th floor, sure that it would plummet and send me to my death.
The next morning we headed to the station and boarded our train. About an hour into the journey, the stranger gestured that he needed to use the bathroom. Doc Wilcox pointed to where it was, about twenty feet in front of us.
Thirty minutes later, he still hadn’t returned.
“I think you should check on him,” Doc Wilcox said to me. “He’s probably sick, last night’s meal was surely too rich for someone who’s not used to it.”
I went to the bathroom and knocked. No response. I tried the door, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t.
The bathroom was empty. There was a small window, about four feet off the ground, that was open. It seemed too small for him to have crawled through, but there was no other explanation. One of us would have seen him if he had walked out.
I ran back with the news. Doc Wilcox gasped, but my dad remained calm. “Son,” he said, “people like him don’t stick around in one place very long.”
“But wouldn’t he hurt himself jumping from the train?” I asked. For some reason, even though I couldn’t communicate with him, I had grown fond of the man.
“Just because he doesn’t speak English doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. I’m sure he waited till it slowed down as it approached a station. He’s fine, don’t worry.”
Despite my dad’s assurances, I was worried sick. I said a silent prayer for the violet-eyed stranger.
***
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived back in North Carolina. Doc Wilcox offered to let us stay the night at his place, but my dad wanted to get back to the farm. I was a little nervous about traveling at night, but my dad assured me everything would be fine. According to him, mules had good night vision. Plus, the moon would be nearly full.
We got our mules from the livery and set off. We probably made only ten miles before nightfall. But my dad and his mules, even though they went to the county seat only once a year or so, seemed to know their way. Relaxed, I curled up and fell asleep.
I was awoken by the howling of wolves. I jolted up and looked around. We were cresting Johnson’s Hill, only a mile from home.
“It’s OK,” my dad said to me. “They’re far off in the distance, a few miles away at least.”
They sounded much closer. In fact, they sounded like they were only a few hundred yards away, down by my fishing spot at Copper Falls.
“Relax,” my dad said, sensing that I was still afraid. “They’re skittish things, been hunted nearly to extinction in these parts. The few that remain in these mountains know how to avoid humans. They’re not going to attack a wagon.”
As we descended the hill, I looked towards the falls, sure that I would see a pack of gigantic wolves ready to lunge at us. There weren’t any, but there was a campfire, and, in the light of the flames, I saw an old woman dancing.
I pointed it out to my dad but he just kept his eyes on the road. “Don’t fret, son,” he said. “Just some hobos. The fire will keep the wolves away. Nothing to be afraid of.”
I wanted to avert my eyes from the flames, but I couldn’t. As we neared the bottom of the hill, I saw clearly that the crone who was dancing was Ma McDermott. Usually, the arthritic cripple could barely move, but that night her feet were moving like the ground was on fire. As she danced, she began to sing in Gaelic, her voice harsh and raspy.
Suddenly, the petroglyphs started glowing red. The hideous carvings—the cyclopses and the ogres and the other monstrous beings—left their rocky confines and joined hands with the witch. They were still 2-dimensional lines, with no substance to their forms, but they were alive.
I tried to call out to my dad, but my throat was swollen shut. As the witch danced in the night, white smoke began rising from the campfire, rising above the bare trees and high into the night sky, coalescing into the form of a gigantic wolf’s head.
From the heavens, it let out a thunderous howl.
My dad seemed unable to see or hear it, but the mules sure could. Even though they were tired from the long journey, they took off galloping.
I closed my eyes, sure that at any moment a band of smoke wolves would attack our wagon, but we made it home safely.
“Wonder what spooked the mules?” my dad asked as we were leading them into the barn.
“You didn’t see the wolf’s head in the sky?” I asked.
He laughed. “Son, you were just dreaming. It’s been a long couple of days. Get some sleep.”
It was then that I saw the stranger’s knife, lying on the hay bale where he always sat, its blade glinting in the moonlight. As my dad was leaving the barn, I pocketed it. We had a shotgun and two hunting rifle at home, but I had a feeling that those weapons would be powerless against Ma McDermott and her smoke wolves. However, I thought the stranger’s knife might prove effective.
***
Neither Ma McDermott nor her wolves visited our farm that night. Or the night after. Or the one after that. I started to believe that I had dreamt the whole thing. However, I still did not go back to Copper Falls. Instead, I fished the other brooks and creeks near our farmhouse. But the fish weren’t biting.
After about a month of subpar fishing, I gained the courage to go back to the falls. It wasn’t an ideal day for fishing—it was freezing and a strong wind was blowing in from the south—but still I went. I had an itch that could only be scratched by some good fishing.
I took the stranger’s knife with me. Even though I had almost convinced myself that it was a dream, having it gave me comfort.
Shortly after sunset, I saw Rev. Duncan, the crazy Baptist preacher, walk down Johnson’s Hill, carrying a small burlap sack that was tied shut with twine. I hid behind some bushes, knowing that if he saw me, the crazy man would likely accuse me of sorcery.
I thought that he would continue down the path, but instead, upon reaching the bottom of the hill, he headed into the woods. He stopped where I had just been standing—where I had left my cane pole—and looked around. Thankfully, the ground was frozen solid and I hadn’t left any footprints.
He began walking around, peering into the bushes, coming within ten feet of me. I was sure that he was going to hear my rapidly beating heart, but somehow he didn’t. After searching the area, he returned to where I had been fishing, set the burlap sack down, took out a gold pocket watch from his overcoat, and looked up at the hill.
I considered running away, but I knew Rev. Duncan would likely catch me. And who knows what he would do then.
I prayed that he would leave. I stayed where I was behind the bushes, stayed until the only light in the sky was from the moon and stars, but the preacher did not go anywhere. In my right hand, I gripped the stranger’s knife, ready to use in case he found me.
After God knows how long, the person Rev. Duncan was waiting for finally arrived. The full moon illuminated Ma McDermott as she slowly descended the hill, her tall hickory stick in her right hand, a dagger in her left.
I thought that the reverend had lured Ma McDermott to the falls under false pretenses, that he planned to kill her, but when she finally made it to where the preacher was standing, they greeted each other like old friends.
“I think there’s someone nearby,” Rev. Duncan said.
The witch smiled. “Then there will be two sacrifices tonight.”
Unlike the preacher, she had no trouble finding me. Her eyes soon fixed on the bush I was hiding behind. “Come out, little boy,” she said as she cackled.
I lunged at her, knife raised, but she pointed her hickory stick at me and recited an incantation.
I was stopped dead in my tracks. I was a statue, almost completely frozen. I could still see, could still hear, could even blink and move my eyeballs, but, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t even wiggle my toes.
The witch hobbled over to me and scratched my cheek with one of her overgrown, yellow fingernails. “What such a pleasant surprise,” she said. She turned to the preacher. “We’ll save him for last. Let’s get to work.”
As the witch sang a song in Gaelic, the preacher knelt down by the creek and made diminutive effigies from the river mud, each one about six inches tall, using tiny twigs for their arms and pebbles for their eyes. When he had about ten of these humanlike figurines, he began positioning them in a circle.
As he was arranging them, the thing inside the burlap sack started moving. At first, I thought it was a chicken they were going to sacrifice, but then I heard a cry like that of a baby from inside.
“Hurry,” the witch said to the preacher, who was flaking off pieces of a pine stump to use as fire starter. “Just get some twigs, I can set them alight.”
The preacher gathered some sticks and set them down in the circle. The witch raised her stick and they were instantly set ablaze. As the wood began to burn, the figurines the preacher had made began walking slowly around the circle.
The witch resumed singing, faster than before. The preacher untied the burlap sack and reached into it. I was expecting him to pull out a baby, but he didn’t.
It was a fairy, about a foot in height, dressed in a roughspun moss-colored garment. There were no wings on his back, but it was clear as day that he wasn’t an infant. His ears were sharply pointed, his face was deeply wrinkled, and his beard long and red.
The fairy tried to free himself, but his hands and feet had been bound with coarse rope. He looked at me, as if begging for help. But I was unable to move.
As the preacher held the fairy tight, the witch sauntered over to him. She raised her dagger high in the air. As she was reciting an incantation, the stranger’s knife left my hand.
I hadn’t thrown it, I was still frozen. But the knife was somehow flying through the air, curving towards the neck of Ma McDermott. Neither she nor the preacher had any idea what was coming. She was lowering the blade when the stranger’s knife embedded itself in the witch’s neck. She staggered backwards, dropped the dagger, and collapsed.
***
As the witch lay dying, blood pouring from her neck, the preacher dropped the fairy and fled up Johnson’s Hill. A few seconds later, Ma McDermott drew her final breath.
Almost immediately, everything returned to normal. The dancing effigies fell to the ground and the white smoke, which had been coalescing into the form of a wolf’s head, was quickly dispersed by the wind. I looked behind me, making sure the monstrous petroglyphs were in their rocky confines. They were.
With the witch’s dagger, I freed the fairy, who was seemingly unharmed. He said something to me before scampering off in the woods. It wasn't in English. Nor was it in the language the stranger spoke. If I had to guess I would say it was Gaelic. It was similar to the language Ma McDermott had been singing in.
I left the witch where she lay, the stranger’s knife still embedded in her neck, and hurried home. My dad asked me where I had been. I told him that I had run into a friend while I was out fishing and that he had invited me over to his farm for dinner. I never told him what happened at Copper Falls. I never told anyone.
That Sunday, the preacher wasn’t at the pulpit. The gossip was that he had run off with some Jezebel. There was also talk about how Ma McDermott had been murdered. Still, despite this, I tried to convince myself that it was all a dream.
And, as time went on, I believed it more and more. Until today. Until the stranger’s knife, for some reason, entered my life again.
#entertainment
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