The following is from Antonio Michael Downing’s debut novel Black Cherokee. Downing is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy and children’s book, Stars in My Crown. He is the current host of the CBC Radio program The Next Chapter where he discusses books with authors and columnists. He spends his time writing books, singing songs, and trying to make his grandma proud.

By the end of her climb her thighs cramped, her left foot ached, and Grandma Blue was an angry bull.

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Ungrateful. Not one year from when we buried him, they voted to undo everything he’d done. That scoundrel Chief Trouthands lived and died for his people. He deserved better. And now they’ve ruined the river?

Swirling thoughts haunted her. In 1987 the Etsi band disbanded, and most people left. Either west to Tulsa, or—as the last Black Cherokee families did—to Atlanta. The Blue Rivers family and two dozen others had always been there at the bend in the river. For two hundred years they had survived. Andrew Jackson. The Civil War. The Dawes Rolls. Smallpox. Jim Crow. But the vote to disband—sold to them by a Charleston lawyer—taken up by their desperation, had made Etsi unrecognizable to the woman who had once been one of its pillars.

Ain’t nothing left for me in Etsi but ghosts.

As she crested the hill, her eyes winced at the sight of Etsi’s school. It reminded her of Shango, Aiyanna, and Belle, her children who no longer talked to her. Dead ahead loomed Chief ’s—the building her husband had built. She and Chief had bundled into a sleeping bag, the heat of his chest pressed against her, the ice-blue stars above them. This was the first time he told her his dream: “Night has the moon, Day has the sun, Etsi needs a center. A focal point.” Big dreams. Big talks. This was his way. But then he built it. And the people he built it for met there to unbuild his legacy. This was why she hated coming to Etsi.

Moytoy’s General Store was a sprawling feast.

Grandma Blue let Ophelia rush past when she opened the door. She knew that her grandchild could not help herself. The scents held her captive: redeye and largemouth bass, ripe pears, apples and apricots. I don’t think she’s normal. Grandma Blue knew that the child would “daydream.” That’s what she called it, but the frightening truth was that she did not know the word for the thing Ophelia did. For the way she acted as though she could see smells. Or would stand listening to music no one else could hear.

She found Moytoy sneaking up on Ophelia with a lollipop.

“Looking for this?”

His head of silver hair was tied into two thick braids. Pasty, light-brown skin spotted with splotches of darker brown.

“For me?!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

There was a spicy, warm smell to him like fresh bread.

He was ancient now, but Grandma Blue remembered when he was light on his feet and couldn’t grow a beard. Ophelia took the lollipop and tried and failed to not stare at his dancing eyes, then she felt Grandma Blue’s eyes on her also.

“Wado, Moytoy Trouthands.”

He grinned at her with his gums.

“Gully ah lee jae ha, Ophelia.”

She couldn’t pronounce it yet, but Ophelia knew that he meant she was welcome.

“You still here, Moytoy, you old pestilence?”

“Well, if I’m old, what does that make you, Grandma Blue?”

Her husband’s brother had been her best friend since before she married Chief.

“It makes me in a rush.”

She handed over her grocery list, which she had made Ophelia copy out the day before, to practice her writing.

“In a rush or tired of talking?”

Moytoy’s eyes skipped around her. They danced endlessly.

“Did Chief Trouthands, that drunken brother of yours, tell you all my secrets?”

“Who can keep secrets in Etsi?”

Ophelia studied them from the shadows of the shelves. Grandma Blue wondered what the child got from listening to two old people talk. But then she recalled that she had known Moytoy since before she was Ophelia’s age. That she had had many friends when she was Ophelia’s age. It made her uneasy to think that she was depriving the girl. The only conversations she could overhear were grown-up ones. It’s for her own good, Grandma Blue thought. Pushing aside her doubt she turned to Moytoy.

“Well, is it true what your niece says? Did Jack Beauregard’s farm poison the river?”

Moytoy flapped his lips fast like an engine.

“Seems so . . . ”

His eyebrows reached up towards his scalp, an invitation for her to come closer.

“Three weeks ago the river to the west of town started to stink like Clorox. Last week a whole school of trout floated up belly first. People suspected Beauregard Farms’ big cattle operation outside Stone River. Now—according to Waya Ganega—it’s been confirmed.”

Grandma Blue took a long drink of air and waited, and then another tall breath before she investigated Moytoy’s restless gaze. So it’s true. This is the last straw. If we lose this, we lose our home.

“If we were still a reservation, the U.S. Marshals would shut them down.”

“Yeah?” Moytoy shrugged. “Too bad we lost that argument.”

“Now we have to sue them.” The old woman sighed, as if resigning herself to a catastrophe she hadn’t seen coming. “Let me see what I can do about your grocery list.”

While he was in the back collecting those items, another man—whom Grandma Blue recognized as Wes Ganega, Waya’s youngest brother—came in. He was in his twenties and had long black hair, but his bare chest was smooth under his vest and his young face seemed hardened as if etched in concrete.

“Moytoy man, let me get an Export A, King Size.”

Grandma Blue stiffened.

“Aye!” said Moytoy. “Can’t you see your Elders here?”

“I don’t see no Elders here, just some no-clan Pretendians.”

“You know who this is? Show some respect,” Moytoy demanded, but Wes Ganega turned around, made a scraping sound with his mouth, and spat a heavy wad of tobacco on the ground in front of Grandma Blue.

The cherrywood stick whacked the floor, and the dust it stirred up hung suspended in the air. Grandma Blue crossed the distance between them and raised her stick to hit him.

Wes Ganega’s eyes and nostrils flared wide, two veins streaked up his neck, and his fists balled up to hit her back.

“You get from here,” Moytoy shouted. “Don’t you have any respect? Grandma Blue helped raise your mother and is a Long-Hair same as you. Who are you to say she ain’t one of us?”

Wes Ganega spun towards Moytoy. “Stop lying, old man. No monkey raised my mother.”

Moytoy came from behind the counter, but as he did, Wes Ganega turned and left, saying, “This is why all the real Cherokee packed up and left Etsi.”

The front door to the General Store banged shut. He was gone.

The walk back down Rock Hill Road was even faster than uphill. Grandma Blue strode to the dock with the determined blindness of someone who wanted to get something over with.

Auntie Kay filed in beside the old woman while Ophelia trailed, struggling to keep up. She was high-waisted, slim and bouncy. Fluffiness was her style: Her flared dress had fuchsia flowers printed on it, and she wore bracelets that twinkled with charms. Auntie Kay struggled to match their pace.

“Can I have a word, Grandma Blue? About Ophelia?”

The old woman neither answered nor slowed down.

“When is she going to come to school? I’m worried that she is missing out . . . ”

“You sayin’ I can’t teach her right?”

“I’m not saying that . . . ” Auntie Kay said, chasing her breath. “Nola says that she’s better at math, and Nola is a year older. I’m sure you’re doing your best . . . ”

Grandma Blue checked to see if Auntie Kay knew how condescending that sounded.

“I’m worried that Ophelia is missing out socially.”

The march stopped abruptly. Auntie Kay almost tripped over her skirt. When she found her balance, she also found Grandma Blue scowling at her.

“And what kind of society do you have for her there? You want me to send her to your school so some mean kid can send her home crying and hating herself? Like they did to her father? To my daughters? What society you got for a little Black Cherokee girl?”

Auntie Kay had no answer to that. But she summoned a question. A question that planted its hooks firmly into the old lady’s chest.

“What is this little girl gonna do when you’re gone?”

When the forced march resumed, only Ophelia followed.

Auntie Kay’s question had churned up a whole country of pain inside the old woman. It struck her where she was already obsessed: Was she too old to raise a young girl? Didn’t she make a mess of raising her own children? Children weren’t plants. What did she know about raising a child right? Her face winced. The end of her stick splintered on the ground like tree trunks snapping in the bush. This question stirred her up in a way Wes Ganega’s ignorance could not.

At the bottom of the hill, Moose and her brothers waited on the dock again. They took one look at the snapping of her stick and scampered for shelter.

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From Black Cherokee by Antonio Michael Downing. Used with permission of the publisher, Simon & Schuster. Copyright © 2025 by Antonio Michael Downing.