Chapter 1 The graves took all night to dig. There were seven in all, each between five and six feet deep, dug by a dozen pairs of hands. Some of the diggers brought gloves, and they took turns sharing them with those who had not so as to try to keep their hands from breaking. By the end, every hand was blistered and burning just the same. Their fingers hurt to straighten. Their backs bent crooked as laurel. It was the middle of summer, but on the mountain the air was cool. Each time they swapped out of the graves to rest, their sweat chilled their bodies and they welcomed that feeling, for the work had nearly set them afire.

Katydids wailed from the trees and it was that sound that dampened the chomp and clink of spades digging away at the earth, the labored breaths of those who drove their shovels deeper. Around midnight, campus police circled the parking lot once making their rounds, but the diggers hid and were soon alone. The dirt rose mounded at the heads of the graves, and when the digging was done they shuttled back and forth from pickup trucks to carry buckets filled with river stones. The young woman who''d planned this took the last of the work alone. She''d painted the river stones white and with them she slowly formed letters on the mounds of clay at the head of each grave. She took her time with this part, as if it were some sort of meditation. Holding each rock with both hands, she slowly turned them until they seemed to show her their place, and when the last was set, a word was spelled. Even in the blue glow she could read what was written, and with it finished she stretched flat on the grass to watch the last of pinprick stars dim and fade as first light blanched the sky.

Early on, she''d considered stretching black sheets over the ground to signify the open graves. But now that the work was done and her body ached, she was glad she had taken the tougher row. This was part of the story and now she knew the details intimately. She rocked forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. Red mud was caked to the legs of her overalls. She could feel the clay dried like a charcoal mask against her face where she''d wiped away sweat with the backs of her hands. She grinned and slowly closed her eyes, satisfied with what they''d accomplished. When the first birds started to call, the people who''d helped her began to leave.

All of them were White save her, and some shook her hand while others hugged her neck. A young man named Brad Roberts was the last to go. He was a graduate student at the school and had been a tremendous help all summer with everything she was doing. Over the last two months, they''d spent time together nearly every day. He walked over and stood by her side. "It''s powerful," he said, placing one hand gently at the back of her arm. "It really is, Toya." His words filled her with pride.

Once he was gone and she was alone, she slipped a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket. She opened the paper to a black-and-white photograph she''d printed at the library. In the picture, nineteen men and women were gathered in front of a church. Most of the men wore mustaches and all of the women wore hats, every person dressed in their Sunday best. Her third-great-grandfather stood in the second row with his hand in his pocket, something she could tell because of the way his jacket angled across the waist of his slacks. He was tall and lean with a low brow that shaded his eyes, light-skinned compared to his wife, who stood beside him. Her third-great-grandmother had a white knitted shawl draped over her shoulders, a wide-brimmed black hat propped high on her head. In the woman''s face, the girl could see her mother, traits that had carried down and were still traveling.

As she stood there studying the faces in the photograph, the faces of where and whom she''d come from, she couldn''t help feeling like they were watching her, their flat stares reaching somewhere far back inside her. It was as if there were a closet at the back of her heart and that image, coupled with the smell of the dirt, had somehow opened a door she had not known lay closed. She folded the photograph and slid it back into her pocket, then walked across the courtyard to a sidewalk by the road. A small bronze plaque had been placed there long ago to dedicate the ground, and it was this plaque that had led to this. Over the course of the summer, she''d stood here dozens of times and read what was written until the lines were memorized. On this site in 1892 eleven former slaves founded the Cullowhee African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The congregation, church and cemetery moved in November 1929 to make room for the construction of Robertson Hall. The plaque, of course, did not tell the story.

In truth there were eighty-six bodies and an amputated arm exhumed and reburied. When she''d asked her grandmother about what had happened, her grandmother had said that as a child she''d been told that when they dug up the bodies, the hair of the dead had kept growing, a grisly detail she didn''t know whether to believe or dismiss as some scary story intended to frighten children. Looking back, her grandmother thought it was most likely true. Her voice had trembled as she said this. In a whole lot of ways, the young woman thought, pain had been passed down from one generation to the next, and that''s what so many people never could understand unless it was their history, unless this was their story. For certain groups in America, trauma was a sort of inheritance. The young woman turned from the plaque to the three-story building that stood in place of the church, the red brick walls warming in color as sunlight started to reach them. The courtyard and graves still rested in shade from a tall hedgerow of pines, and she walked with her hands locked together at her chest for one last look before going.

The stones were brighter now and under her breath she read what they spelled aloud. In the beginning, there was only the word. Chapter 2 That same night, seven miles down the road, the scene looked like a faded postcard from forty years ago. An ''84 Caprice Classic wagon sat in the nightglow outside Harold''s Supermarket. Harold''s had been right there on that short stretch of road between Sylva and Dillsboro since the early seventies and never much changed its look. The parking lot was empty except for the Chevrolet. Streetlights filtered through the fog and shone off the blacktop to make the lot appear a solid sheet of dark blue glass. A clerk working alone at the gas station across the road made the call.

She said the first two times the man walked into the How Convenient he grabbed three tallboys of Busch Ice and paid cash. There was about an hour between each visit, another hour or so before he stumbled into the store for a third time. That last visit he gathered another three cans, emptied his pockets, and counted out a fistful of change. He wound up sixty cents shy and tripped toward the beer cooler to trade the tallboys for a forty-ounce High Life. There was just enough left over for a couple loose cigarettes from a foam cup next to the register. None of this of course was all that odd. A girl works graveyard at a filling station that sells more booze than petrol and she comes to see all sorts of folks waltz through that door. If it had been one of the usuals she wouldn''t have batted an eye.

But the thing was, she didn''t know this man from Adam, and in a place like this a girl like her came to know every drunk in town. She took a smoke break after sweeping the store. Leaning against the wall by the stacks of five-dollar firewood outside, she could see the man across the street sprawled on the hood of his car cussing at the sky in front of Harold''s. Deputy Ernie Allison had been working nights all month for the Jackson County Sheriff''s Office. Harold''s fell within Sylva limits and was town police jurisdiction, but budget cuts had the Sylva PD low on patrol and Ernie wasn''t doing much anyway. Tuesday nights were always dead shifts. Town police were already on scene when he arrived, a single patrol car at the far side of the parking lot. Ernie cut his headlights as he veered through the empty spaces at an angle.

He yawned and rubbed the heel of his right hand into his eyes, trying to shake himself awake. Running his palm from his forehead through his hair, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. His hair was trimmed low, his green eyes glassy and tired. As he pulled beside the cruiser, he lowered his window and looked across at a familiar face. Tim McMahan and Ernie had graduated in the same high school class. Ever since they were kids, McMahan had been a drag. When they were seniors in high school, Tim ratted out the baseball team for getting stoned in the dugout after games. To this day, Ernie would''ve dreaded Tim''s sidling up beside him at the bar, dreaded the drawn-out conversation, the you''ll-never-guess-who-I-ran-intos, but despite all that Tim was decent police.

"You seen anybody?" "Yeah, he''s passed out in the back of that dinosaur." Tim motioned toward the station wagon that was parked in front of the store. The car was dark green with faded wood paneling and a crack running straight across the back glass. "You try waking him up?" "Figured I''d wait on you once I heard you check en route." "I was bored stupid," Ernie said. "Couldn''t hardly keep my eyes open." Tim chuckled and smiled. "I bet I''d been asleep an hour.

" He grabbed an empty Mountain Dew from the cup holder and spit a dark line of snuff.