The Coonskin Cap

North Carolina 1948.

Granddaddy Potts liked to claim that the ghost of Daniel Boone roamed the mountains as he had in life. If a hunter wasn’t scared of haints, the mountain man’s spirit could inhabit his body and guide him.

Eight-year-old Sue Bee Potts prayed that Daniel Boone would hop into her skinny frame and make her the mightiest hunter on Black Mountain. Granddaddy had taught her to catch rabbits in wicker snares, but he was old and sad and spent most days tending his cornfield.

One day, the farmer took Sue Bee out to the barn and opened a wooden box. He removed a coonskin cap with a striped tail and settled it over the child’s straight brown hair. Her daddy had worn the fur when he was a little boy, he told her. Holding the magic of the mountains, the coonskin cap had allowed young John Potts to carry Daniel Boone’s soul inside him.

Sue Bee wore the cap day and night, only taking it off for her Saturday bath on the back porch. It wasn’t long before she sensed a strange power flowing into her bones. The little girl felt strong enough to wrestle a bear and coil a snake into a rug. Granddaddy was delighted. Mama was not.

“Preacher says it’s a mortal sin, you telling that child she’s possessed by Daniel Boone,” Virginia Potts told her father-in-law. “She snuck out of Sunday School and ran off into the woods, said Daniel Boone was gonna show her how to catch a crow with her bare hands. You throw that coonskin cap away.”

Granddaddy spat out his tobacco chaw. “Now you wait a doggone minute —”

“No, you wait. You done got that girl breaking the Sabbath and believing a haint’s living in her breast.”

“Ain’t no harm in her believing such.”

She held up her callused hand. “There’s harm in you making her out to be something she ain’t, Mr. Potts. She tramps the woods like a renegade and ignores her schooling. The teacher says she ain’t doing her letters. Spends all her time gaping out the window, pining to go hunting. I want better for her. I want her book-learned and God-fearing. I want her fit to live down in Raleigh when she’s growed, where folks ain’t a superstitious ignoramus.” Virginia had nearly finished the eighth grade in Raleigh before she married John Potts and moved to Granddaddy’s farm on Black Mountain. She thought she knew everything that could be known because she was educated and could throw around big words.

Muttering, he stalked out to the barn to feed the ox and repair a brace on the plow handle.

What was the harm in his granddaughter fancying she could host Daniel Boone like her daddy had when he was little? Her enthusiasm lessened the pain of John’s death, almost like he had his boy back. She looked exactly like John in that coonskin cap, toting home rabbits she’d snared.

Last year, Sue Bee’s daddy had gotten cut in two at the sawmill in Asheville. This was the first time she’d smiled since that awful day in June. He’d be damned if he would discourage her.

The day before Sue Bee’s ninth birthday, Granddaddy walked 15 miles to Asheville and traded a sack of seed corn for a battered pellet rifle. He carved DANIEL BOONE into the plain wooden stock and headed back up the mountain.

The next morning, he found Sue Bee in the pasture, trimming the hooves on their small herd of goats.

“Look what I come across yesterday, sugar. Daniel Boone’s very own rifle. Reckon the birthday girl might hunt rabbits with something better than a willow twig snare?”

Speechless, Sue Bee took the gun out of his gnarly hands. He pushed her hair up under her coonskin cap. Since this was a special occasion, he let her skip school. They spent half the morning plinking tin cans off the split-rail fence.

Sue Bee forgot all about the cans when Granddaddy spied a small timber rattler curled around a fence post. It looked like an easy target.

“Aim right behind the head, sugar, like if you was to hit it with a hoe.”

Sue Bee missed it twice before she struck it. Thrilled, she ran to the dead snake. Granddaddy caught her before she could pick it up.

“See them eyes? They got a gleam in ’em. He’s got a headache, but he ain’t dead. Like I used to tell your daddy, don’t never go grabbing a serpent till you know it’s kilt.”

He mashed its skull with his boot heel and then let Sue Bee cut off the head and three-button rattle with her daddy’s pocketknife.

“A wounded snake’s as dangerous as a mountain panther,” he warned. “Don’t never turn your back on one. You shoot it, you make dang sure it’s dead. And like I’ve told you many a time, don’t never stick your paw where you can’t see what you’re reaching for.”

“No sir, I won’t.” Hoping another rattler would show up for target practice, she was barely listening.

The old farmer held up the rough-scaled carcass. “He’s kindly puny, but there’s enough meat on him for dinner.”

Sue Bee’s mouth watered. There was nothing finer than rattlesnake meat pan-fried with okra. Using either his hoe or the revolver he’d carried in the First World War, Granddaddy had killed dozens in the rocky hills. Sue Bee kept a cigar box of rattles under her bed. Tickled at the prospect of adding her own trophy to the collection, she stashed the small rattle in the bib pocket of her overalls.

Granddaddy studied her, thinking she was like John in more ways than just looks. She was inclined to be reckless, and in the hills, that could get you killed. Maybe he was the reckless one. But that smile … Lordamercy, he wasn’t about to take away that smile.

Still, he needed to make sure she understood the danger. “Another thing, sugar, don’t go messing with no big rattlers. You stay off from them. And don’t shoot no animals big enough to take you down. Nothing bigger’n a possum, y’hear?”

“Yessir, Granddaddy.”

“You sewanee?”

She crossed her heart and spat over her left shoulder. “Yessir.”

Granddaddy gestured at the snake’s head. Sue Bee knew what to do. She dug a hole, flipped the head into it with a stick, and tamped down the dirt. It was dangerous to leave any part of a venomous snake for the buzzards. Its mate would come after you.

“And here’s something you got to know, something the goldarn preacher will tell you not to believe.” He paused to stuff a fresh chaw between his cheek and gum. “Critters got souls like me and you, even poison snakes. You got to respect ’em, give thanks for the fruit of their bodies. Daniel Boone didn’t hunt for the sake of killing. He hunted to feed his family.”

“Like me when I catch a rabbit.”

She watched for his cloudy old eyes to light up, but he remained solemn. “A gun’s a sight more powerful than a snare. That coonskin cap allows Boone’s soul to guide and protect you. You gotta be worthy of it. Your daddy always was.”

Her eyes big, she touched the fur cap reverently. He laid his hand on her thin shoulder. “Remember the frontier code, Sue Bee Potts. You don’t never kill for sport. Never.”

The next morning, Sue Bee was the first pupil to arrive at the Baptist Church that the tiny mountain community used for a schoolhouse. She eyeballed the crows flapping around in the pines and wondered if she could hit one. Granddaddy didn’t know she’d carried the pellet gun to school for show-and-tell. The weapon had given her confidence as she walked the shadowy trail down the hill. She could feel Daniel Boone’s heart beating alongside hers.

Nudging her coonskin cap to a jaunty angle, she ran her fingers over his name on the gun stock. She thought about his soul inside her. She would do him proud. Her dead daddy, too. And Granddaddy Potts. She aimed to be the best hunter he’d ever heard tell of, even better than her daddy had been.

When the other children arrived, she showed them the signature on the stock. Riley Green curled his lip. “That ain’t Dan’l Boone’s rifle. And you ain’t no kind of shot, you scrawny girl. Bet you don’t even know which end of the barrel the bullet flies out of.”

She bowed up like a bobcat. “Yeah? You put your tongue in your pocket and watch this.”

Sue Bee pumped up the gun and started firing into the belfry. She pinged the church bell five or six times before Miss Hoyt ran out and got her by the ear. The teacher switched her bare legs, wrote a note to her mama, and sent her home.

Sue Bee trudged up the long trail and saw her mama scrubbing clothes in the washtub. Her thick, wavy hair had come loose from the bun. Sweat soaked her worn blue dress and flowered apron. She looked old and tired. Sue Bee’s heart gave a tug. Mama hadn’t smiled since Daddy died. She wasn’t fixing to smile now.

Sidling over like she was stalking a squirrel, Sue Bee handed her the note. Virginia scanned it, let out a holler, and yanked off the coonskin cap.

“I’m gonna lick the livin’ lard out of you, missy,” she yelled. “You ain’t Daniel Boone and I ain’t having you shooting up the church.”

“But I didn’t—”

“You hush your mouth and go churn me some butter.” She grabbed Ol’ Hickory and switched Sue Bee all the way to the kitchen.

Granddaddy heard the ruckus and came running. He took the switch out of his daughter-in-law’s hand. “Leave the gal alone.”

Virginia angrily told him what Sue Bee had done. “You carry that gun back to town before somebody gets kilt.”

“Ain’t nobody getting kilt, and she’s keeping the gun. Hell, I’ll pay her two bits to head on back and shoot the pull rope in half, and another two bits to roll the damn bell into the creek.”

“You ain’t serious.”

“If I’m lying, I’m dying. That bell wakes me every Sunday morning, the only day I got to rest. I’d sell my soul for a chance to take Ol’ Hickory to the seat of the preacher’s britches.”

She stabbed her finger at his face. “You old heathen, I might of knowed you’d take up against the Lord’s Anointed.”

“Anointed, my eye.” He set his mouth in a grim line, remembering the funeral sermon. The preacher said they ought to be proud that John was saved and had gone to a better place. Granddaddy didn’t want John in a better place. He wanted him here.

“You ain’t got no respect for the Lord nor me, either,” Virginia said. “Sue Bee’s done latched onto your ungodly ways. And you let her play hooky yesterday, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Potts.”

 

While they were fussing, Sue Bee snatched her cap on, grabbed the rifle off the table, and hightailed it. She heard her mama shouting but she ran too fast for the words to catch up. A kid wasn’t responsible for what she didn’t hear. She was chalking a clean slate.

At the edge of the woods, a doe stepped out and sniffed the air. Sue Bee was downwind. Moving at snail speed, she eased the rifle to her shoulder. The pellet gun was no match for the big animal, but she squeezed off a round, anyway. The pellet missed wide right. The doe leaped sideways and bounded into the woods. Determined to track her, Sue Bee searched the shadows for hoofprints and broken twigs. There was no sign she’d been there.

Deer are like ghosts, Daddy had always told her. Able to come and go without a trace.

Thinking of Daddy made her chest tight and her eyes burn. The last time she’d seen him alive, he and Granddaddy were carrying home a buck tied to a pole. Granddaddy walked taller back then, and his eyes glowed. She wanted to see that light again. Someday, she would bring home a deer.

Glimpsing a squirrel cutting twigs, she drew a bead on it. Just as she squeezed the trigger, something slithered across her bare foot. Thinking it was a rattler, she jumped and missed the shot. She was relieved to see a black racer scoot into the poison ivy.

A minute later, she surprised a cottontail rabbit nibbling wild strawberries. Before she could get the gun off her shoulder, the critter bounced away. She shot into the bushes but knew she’d missed.

“Drat it to blazes!” She sat down and cussed some more.

“Stalk hunting ain’t like setting snares,” someone whispered in her ear. “You’ve got to quit tromping the woods like a bear in brambles.”

She snatched around expecting to see Granddaddy. Nobody there. It had to be Daniel Boone’s spirit advising her.

Holding the gun at the ready, she began moving through the woods as she’d never done before, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe, almost soundless in the dry leaves. She could hardly feel her feet on the ground. It was like her head was attached to someone else’s body.

A possum was perched on a branch. She eased the gun up to her shoulder. PING! The animal toppled out of the tree and hit the ground. Sue Bee didn’t know if the shot or the fall had killed it, but she thanked Daniel Boone for his assistance. She remembered to thank the possum, too. When Mama boiled it with a mess of collards, she would understand about the rifle. Granddaddy’s eyes would shine and he’d say she was John Potts made over.

A raccoon twice the size of the possum trundled out of the bushes. Ignoring Granddaddy’s warning against shooting big critters, she fired and nicked his ear. Snarling, he came after her. Sue Bee dropped the gun and swung into the late possum’s tree just ahead of his teeth. He growled and then ran off with the dead possum.

She threw a stick at his back. “You danged old bandit, I’d like to make me a doormat out of your mangy hide. You ain’t nothing but a stupid—”

A gust of cold wind blew her coonskin cap off. Her words stuck in her craw. Sure that Daniel Boone was chastising her, she climbed down from the tree. Not only had she made a careless shot, but she’d insulted the critter. Empty-handed and ashamed, she walked home.

That evening, Sue Bee ate her collards and cornbread in silence. Although Granddaddy didn’t ask about the hunt, she sensed he knew what she’d done. She resolved to heed the frontier code from now on. No more disobeying Granddaddy and shooting big animals. No more disrespecting their immortal souls. She touched the coonskin cap and hoped Daniel Boone would forgive her.

As part of her penance, Sue Bee tried to pay attention to Miss Hoyt in class. She soon tired of the enterprise and dropped her chalk slate down the well during recess. What was the use in learning geography when she already knew every inch of Black Mountain? Why did she need American history when Granddaddy often told her about fighting in the Great War? And why read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when she could read animal signs and moon phases? And arithmetic was a waste of time for a girl who could estimate how much salt it took to put up game for the winter.

Besides, staring at the schoolroom walls gave her too much time to think about Daddy, and thinking about him made her chest hurt. She didn’t tell Miss Hoyt, who always sent for Dr. Thompson when her pupils got sick. He didn’t have anything that would help, anyway. Not even her mama’s root medicine worked on a broken heart. If the coonskin cap couldn’t mend her, nothing could. Best to keep her pain locked inside her soul where nobody could see it.

When summer came, Sue Bee began staying outside from daylight till the pink of evening. The spirit of Daniel Boone permeated every bone in her body. His deep voice resonated in her mind. She could now walk as silently as a bobcat. She brought home small game for supper nearly every night. She once shot a turkey hen out from under the nose of the wary old tom. Granddaddy compared her to John Potts and didn’t seem quite so sad anymore.

Sue Bee took to sleeping in the barn so she could slip off without her mama’s interference. When Virginia tried to corner her one morning to make her do chores, Granddaddy caught his daughter-in-law by the apron strings. “Leave her be. She’s hunting to feed the family.”

“She’s hunting for trouble, running the hills like a wild animal. She snuck out of Sunday School again and shot crows behind the church. Helen Smith’s boy, Wayne, told her the government’s paying a 20-cent bounty for crow legs.”

“Damnation, that ain’t bad pay. How many’d she get?”

Virginia broke red on him. “You listen to me, Mr. Potts, my daughter’s transformed into somebody I don’t recognize. She’s been witched. I sewanee, sometimes I hear a man’s voice coming out of her mouth. It’s your fault, inviting the devil to possess my baby’s soul.”

“Daniel Boone ain’t the devil.”

She reared back and punched him square in the chest. “This ain’t all about the haint. It’s about you and John Potts. You can’t bring your son back by molding Sue Bee into his image.”

“Now you wait a consarned second —”

“She’d do anything to make you proud of her.”

“I am proud of her.”

“Because she’s like her daddy.”

“Dadburnit, woman, it’s ’cause I want her to smile again. Ain’t I giving her something to live for?”

“Live for? They’ll be carrying her home on a door one day, just like John.”

Listening from the bushes below the window, Sue Bee remembered Daddy’s mangled body lying cold and still on the door. He’d been clearing a jam at the sawmill in Asheville when his cant hook lost its bite on the log. He was thrown headfirst into the huge blade. Sue Bee wished her mama would hush. Comparing the living to the dead put a curse on them.

Glimpsing the top of her coonskin cap, Granddaddy hollered, “Don’t pay her no mind, sugar. Ain’t nothing can harm frontiersmen like Daniel Boone and you.”

Virginia threw her apron over her face and rushed out of the kitchen.

Sue Bee felt bad for upsetting her. Maybe she should fish the broom and churn dasher out of the well where she’d thrown them. But Mama was wrong about Granddaddy only being proud of her because of his son. Sue Bee would show her it wasn’t so.

She shouldered her rifle and marched into the woods.

After stalking for an hour without seeing a single critter, she headed to the pasture. Their big red ox was grazing with the goats. She spied two diamondback rattlers sunbathing on a boulder near the split-rail fence. The larger one had a head like a corn sheller and a dozen buttons on its tail.

Sue Bee coveted the rattle. It would be the biggest one in her cigar box. Her stomach growled as she thought of fried rattlesnake meat for supper.

Granddaddy had warned her to keep away from big snakes, but the pair was close to the animals. Besides, she could punch through their hides if she shot them pointblank.

She catfooted through the high grass and aimed at the smaller snake’s nose. Pow! It coiled up, its rattle singing like a hornet’s nest. Sue Bee shot it again. It flipped onto its back.

The big snake woke up hissing like a punctured truck tire. She pushed her cap off her sweaty brow so she could see it better. “I aim to get your rattle, you stinkin’ ugly rascal.”

She shot it in the neck. It struck at her and recoiled for another try. Dancing out of reach, she pumped pellets into its thick body until it lay still. She heard the smaller snake rattling and realized it was still alive. Granddaddy had warned her never to turn her back on a wounded snake. She ran over and popped it until it went belly-up.

Sue Bee laughed. “That’ll learn you to try sneaking up on me, you nasty scalawag. You ain’t so sassy now, are you?”

She looked around for the big diamondback. Gone. Her heart jumping, she warily began pressing the grass aside with the rifle barrel. There was no trace of the wounded viper. She figured it had slipped under the boulder to die. No way could she get the rattle she craved.

Disappointed and angry, she cut the head and the rattle off the smaller snake. She slung the carcass over the fence and shoved the rattle in her bib pocket. As she started to dig a hole for the head, a cottontail rabbit hopped onto a stump 30 feet away.

Sue Bee had never made a shot that long. If she succeeded, Granddaddy would be proud of her for her own self, not because she was John Potts’s girl. And Mama would realize she wasn’t cut out to churn butter.

Forgetting the wounded snake, she crouched behind the boulder. The rabbit twitched his nose. Sue Bee steadied the rifle on the boulder, put the iron sights on him, and squeezed off a round. He screamed and took off through the grass, his tail bobbing like a boll of cotton.

Whooping, she dashed after him. The rabbit’s screams set her blood boiling with fearsome delight. This wasn’t about making Granddaddy proud or putting meat on the table. This was the thrill of taking a life for sport.

The cottontail disappeared into a hole by a pine tree. Hoping to flush him out, she shoved the gun barrel into the hole. No reaction. She figured he was holding his breath until she gave up the hunt. It made her mad.

She poked the barrel deeper, but the rabbit didn’t flush. Growling in frustration, she pumped two rounds into the hole. “Come on out, you motheaten varmint. Ain’t no use hiding.”

Cold wind blew the coonskin cap halfway off her head. What is it you’re craving, child?

Her blood instantly cooled. Why had the ghost asked her that, and in such a tone?

She struggled for words to justify herself. This wasn’t like the day she’d wounded the raccoon. She wasn’t mean and careless. She wanted to feed her family, that’s all. He had hankered for the same thing when he was alive, hadn’t he?

“Mr. Boone, I aim to be a mighty hunter like you,” she whispered. “I don’t crave to grow up and move to Raleigh. Granddaddy says you moved every time you saw smoke from another cabin. You wouldn’t appreciate me leaving the mountain and carrying you down there in my cap, would you? I mean, all of them city folks …”

When she heard only the wind in the pines, she figured she’d convinced him. Laying the rifle aside, she flopped down on her belly and tried to see into the hole. If she couldn’t flush the rabbit, she wouldn’t be able to prove her marksmanship to Granddaddy.

She adjusted the coonskin cap and eased her hand into the hole. Nothing. Aggravated, she jammed her arm elbow-deep into the earth.

A flaming ball of barbed wire grabbed her hand. It wasn’t the rabbit.

She could see the bloody carcass of the rattler she’d killed on the fence. Its head lay under it, and she had its rattle in her bib pocket. Its wounded mate must have hidden in the hole. It had eaten the rabbit and was now trying to eat her.

“Mr. Boone, save me!”

The ghost didn’t answer. Her heart pounded out the rhythm: you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.

She screamed for Granddaddy, but the farmhouse was half a mile away. She pulled with all her might. It was like trying to yank up an oak tree. The diamondback was one big mass of muscle and fangs.

It dragged her into the hole up to her shoulder. The venom burned a trail up her arm. When the poison reached her heart, she would die.

Nothing like this had ever happened to Daniel Boone. Maybe his spirit wasn’t inside her anymore. He would have to hop into another body. Hers was fixing to die.

I ain’t worthy of the coonskin cap, she thought. I mocked the rattlers. I shot the rabbit for sport. I disrespected Daniel Boone. Granddaddy, too. And Mama and Miss Hoyt. They’re gonna carry me home on a door like Daddy.

“What the blazes are you up to, young ’un?” Granddaddy was climbing over the fence.

“Rattlesnake’s got me. It won’t turn me loose. It’s poisoning me.”

Granddaddy accidentally swallowed his chaw. He caught her by the straps of her overalls and yanked. Its black eyes glittering, a snake as thick as a mule’s leg emerged with Sue Bee’s hand in its mouth. Blood ran everywhere. Granddaddy had to stomp its tail and pop its skull with his walking stick to make it turn loose. Sue Bee screamed until she passed out.

She woke up in bed. Mama was bathing her hand in a bucket of cold well water. Dr. Thompson was drawing up thick white medicine in a glass syringe. Sue Bee was too weak to fight when her mama turned her over. The doctor stuck the burning needle in her backside.

“Did they carry me home on a door, Mama?” she whispered through a throat swollen with poison.

In the year since John Potts’ death, her mama had only said “I love you” a couple of times. It was like her heart died the same day her husband’s stopped beating. So when she laid her hand on her daughter’s brow and whispered those strange words, Sue Bee knew she was a goner. She felt poison sloshing around in her heart. She heard heavenly angels singing.

“How long I got, Mama? How long tlil Daniel Boone’s spirit drifts off and I ain’t here no more?”

“Shh, baby, don’t talk like that. I ain’t gonna let you go nowhere.”

She settled the coonskin cap on Sue Bee’s head. The doctor swabbed her hand with mercurochrome and wrapped it in a white cloth.

“That penicillin shot will fix her, Miz Potts. Keep her hand elevated. She’ll be all right in a day or two. She’s lucky it wasn’t a venomous snake.”

Sue Bee bolted up in bed. “It wasn’t no poison snake?”

Dr. Thompson cocked his head. “You mean a gal who thinks she’s Daniel Boone don’t know one snake from another?”

Granddaddy walked in. “Sugar, it was a pine snake. Ain’t nobody’s ever come close to dying of a pine snake bite.”

Tears running down his weathered face, he looked at Virginia and offered a smile. She started to cry. He pulled her against his side and together they hugged Sue Bee.

The next trade day, Granddaddy walked Sue Bee down to Asheville. He swapped Daniel Boone’s pellet rifle for a butter churn dasher and a child-sized broom. He traded a sack of corn for a blue hair bow and wool stockings for Mama, and a chalk slate and a toy milk truck for Sue Bee.

The old man squatted down and looked at her. He slowly removed her coonskin cap and studied it. Sue Bee held her breath, wondering what he was fixing to do. He threw the cap onto the dirt road.

Swallowing hard, he stroked the fading bite marks on her hand. “I’ve got to humbly beg your pardon, Sue Bee. Your mama’s, too.”

Perplexed, she gazed at him.

“It’s time I set the spirit of John Potts free. Daniel Boone’s, too. Let ’em fly up yonder to abide. I ain’t gon’ look backwards no more. I aim to spend what’s left of my days looking forwards with my granddaughter. Ain’t nobody I’m prouder of. You don’t need to be nobody but Sue Bee Potts. You and your mama are all I need the rest of my life.”

Sue Bee felt a swelling in her chest. Something as cool and soft as cotton drifted out of the top of her head. Clad in buckskin and furs and holding a long rifle over his shoulder, Daniel Boone shimmered in the air above them. A gauzy figure swam into focus beside the great hunter. John Potts smiled down at his daughter and his daddy.

The coonskin cap stirred on the dusty road, and then wafted into the air. It settled on John’s head. He smiled at Daniel Boone, and then the haints rose into the cloudy sky and disappeared. Granddaddy lifted his gnarled hand in farewell.

Sue Bee’s chest tightened as though it would explode with grief, but then it released, leaving her insides light and airy. Her little family was all she needed. She took her beloved granddaddy’s hand and started the long walk home to her mama waiting on the mountain.