Even As We Breathe

While Griggs searches the room, Cowney remains seated with different soldiers guarding him for hours. Eventually, Peter enters and shares with him some of the things Essie said. Cowney realizes that Essie likely told the military of his attempt to learn Japanese with the idea of selling bear gallbladders to the prisoners. Cowney worries that Andrea and Essie might be in room 447, where the searchers would confront them. Cowney realizes that the room, now compromised, is a place to which he and Essie will never return.

The colonel and his men return and tell him the bone is gone. Griggs says, “Where’s the bone? I know you people do all kinds of godforsaken things” (164, emphasis added), with “you people” once more speaking to Griggs’s prejudice against Indigenous individuals. Griggs demands to know what other lies Cowney has told and tells him it is time for complete truth. Cowney asks if he can make one phone call, which the colonel grudgingly allows. Cowney calls the stranger who showed up at his grandmother’s funeral, Jon Craig, who turns out to be a retired brigadier general and current FBI agent who knows the colonel. The general shows up within the hour and confronts the colonel about his bullying of a young man. Jon points out there is no real evidence against Cowney. Taking Cowney with him, Jon immediately leaves the room.

Cowney follows Jon out of the facility. Jon talks him out of saying anything to Essie, believing Essie intentionally implicated Cowney. As they drive, Jon gives Cowney his first Cheerwine soda and a sandwich to eat on the way to Clyde, North Carolina, where they will meet Bud. Jon tells him some stories about his father in World War I. He relates that some of the white soldiers took bullets out of the Indigenous Americans’ guns so that the Indigenous Americans could not rise up in the middle of the night and shoot their fellow soldiers.

Jon explains that there were three people at the barbed wire fence when his father died. He does not know exactly what happened, though Bud was one of the soldiers there that night and he could tell Cowney what happened. Jon warns Cowney, however, that he might not like what Bud tells him, warning, “sometimes the answers are not the ones you want to hear […] Sometimes you have to decide if you want truth or peace” (174).

They meet Bud in Clyde. Cowney explains to him what is going on as they head back to his home in Cherokee. Cowney notices Bud has a terrible injury on his arm that has become infected. Bud will not go to see the doctor about it. Stopping for a few groceries, Cowney ends up at his home by himself. The emptiness of it strikes him. As his grandmother is no longer there, he keeps her bedroom door closed.

The next day Cowney hikes to the reservation store to develop the film in his camera. Cowney minds the store for Jones, the young man who runs it, while Jones develops the film. As Cowney shows the photos to Tsa Tsi, who is sitting on the porch of the store, one of the photos catches Cowney’s attention. The image reveals a hole in the barbed wire fence around the inn that Cowney knew nothing about and which he would have had to fix immediately.

Cowney ends up spending two weeks at his cabin in Cherokee waiting to hear from Jon about what is happening in the investigation. He knows that Peter has pointed him out as someone who requires further investigation. Peter told investigators he saw Cowney with the little girl. Cowney goes to the store and has Jones, who is about to go away to a college in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to help him fill out applications for two universities.

Cowney receives a letter from Lee, saying he needs Cowney to come back to work. The Army is shutting down its operation at the Grove Park Inn, and he is going to need his help to close things down before the end of the summer. After packing his clothes, Cowney lies in bed, wondering if, as he shows back up at the inn, he will face arrest. He realizes that the forest fire that has been raging for most of the narrative has gotten very close. He goes outside and sees the fire jumping from treetop to treetop. Cowney grabs his bag and a few keepsakes and starts running toward the waterfall when Bud pulls up in his truck. As they drive along, it occurs to Cowney that Bud is the person who has been setting the forest fires to shoot animals as they run away from the flames.

The next morning, he wakes at Bud’s house and hears the telephone ring. The call is from Jon, saying the military has cleared Cowney of responsibility for the little girl’s disappearance. Jon tells him he will come and pick him up and drive him back to the inn. As they ride, Jon tells him about his father’s death and points out that in actuality his father had gone outside holding a gun with one bullet in it to take his own life. Jon overheard an argument between his father and Bud in which Bud admitted to having an affair with Cowney’s mother, meaning Bud has a 50/50 chance of being Cowney’s father. Cowney finds this extremely distressing. He says, “I was too mad to cry, so the tears pooled inside me until I almost drowned from the inside out” (203).

Back at the inn, Lee tells Cowney to speak to Griggs and let him know that he is back. Griggs sternly tells Cowney he is not fully cleared in his eyes. As Cowney leaves the colonel’s office, he encounters Peter. Peter confesses to him that he accidentally shot the little girl while he was trying to get her out of the barbed wire fence. He secretly buried her body at an Asheville cemetery. Trying to cover up the crime, he pinned the blame on Cowney. Peter decides he will confess. Cowney takes him to the colonel’s office, where Peter walks in and makes his confession. When he gets back to his bunk, Cowney discovers a letter from Essie saying that she is going to Italy with Andrea and his family.

After lying on his bed and crying through the lunch hour, Cowney gets up and goes walking through the main building to have one last look at room 447. He feels apathetic and broken: “I entered the main building with no concern for being stopped. I wasn’t that I did not believe someone might stop me; it was just that I no longer cared if they did” (211).

The door stands partially open. Cowney “push[es] the door open slowly, fearful of allowing a memory to escape” (212). When Cowney enters, he sees that the Army had come in and attempted to refinish the room so that they could use it for some kind of an office. Apparently, they stopped partway through. The room is a scene of destruction: There are mud and cigarette ashes on the floor and the few remaining books lie haphazardly on the floor. When he walks out, Cowney closes the door behind him. Since all of the diplomats’ families have departed already, 447 is the only closed door on the 4th floor.

Cowney works for several more weeks at the inn. One evening, Lee takes him to dinner and a movie in Asheville. Cowney experiences prejudice throughout the evening because he is Cherokee. When he returns that evening, he receives a message saying Bud is quite sick and Cowney must come home immediately. With the summer now ending, Cowney packs all his gear and says goodbye to Lee. Lee gives him $300 to use toward his college tuition and agrees to write a letter of recommendation.

When Cowney gets home, he finds Bud near death with gangrene and other complications. Bud tries to tell him about himself and about his father. However, these are things that Cowney has already figured out, and their conversation is very short. Bud tells Cowney that he is proud of him.

When Preacherman arrives, Essie is with him. She explains that Andrea and his family took off without speaking to her. She feels like a fool. Essie explains that she loves Cowney and always will. She intends to get out of Cherokee, however, which she says means she must marry someone who is not a Cherokee: “I have to get out of here and there is only one way for me to do it” (224). They go to see Bud, who asks Cowney to call Jon and tell him that he is dying.

Two days later, Bud dies. Cowney goes to see Lishie’s house, which did not burn in the fire. He describes his love for the land and how it embodies life and is timeless. He explains that, though he never married Essie, they kept in contact all her life. It is now revealed that the elderly Cowney is telling this story to one of Essie’s grandchildren, who has given him a letter from Essie explaining that she wants her grave to lie beside Cowney so that their bones will mingle and their spirits will be together forever.