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to steal for her.”
    “That I did, ma’am. That I did.”
    “Mama done whooped the tar out of Otto when she found out. Beat him with a switch till it snapped in two.”
    “Yup, and then Daddy done came home and beat me, too.” Otto reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a wad of paper crumbles, nails, and a five-dollar bill. He sifts through the stuff and pulls out the tiny silver ring. He gives it to me.
    “Go ahead. Try it on.”
    I put the ring on my finger.
    “For a big girl, you got little fingers,” Worley observes.
    “What a beautiful ring.”
    “Thank you, ma’am.”
    “Where is Destry now?”
    “She died.” Otto sighs.
    “That’s the sad part of the story,” Worley says. He looks at his brother with great feeling.
    “Yes, ma’am. She died. Melungeons git all sorts of things—they catch just about anything that’s out there, and they’re weak, so it tends to take ’em. She was sixteen when she died. I wanted to murry her, but she was too sick.”
    “Why do the Melungeons die like ’at?” Worley asks.
    “Well, the theory is that there’s a lot of inbreeding there. Up in the mountains, folks didn’t mix with the general population. And that hurt them. Because the more of a mix you get, the stronger the blood. Or so the doctors believe.”
    “Where do they come from?”
    “
Melungeon
comes from the French word
mélange
. It means ‘mixed.’ ”
    “I thought the Melungeons were them folks from the Lost Colony down in North Carolina.”
    “That’s another theory.”
    “What’s the Lost Colony?” Worley asks.
    “Ye tell him, Miss Ave,” Otto says.
    “I think the Lost Colony was more of a tale told in the hills rather than actual fact. But the story goes that settlers from England landed on the North Carolina coast near Virginia. The ship dropped them off with supplies, and they built a colony. There was a fort, gardens, little houses, a church—things were going well. But when the ships returned from England a year later, the colony was a ghost town. Beds were made. Books were on shelves. Clothes were hanging in the closets. But no people. The people had vanished. They looked for them but never found them. There was only one clue: the word
Croatan
was carved on a tree. Some believe that a settler carved that before he was kidnapped away by the Indians. It’s just a guess, though. So, a Melungeon could be a person who descends from a mix of the settlers and Indians, who hid here in these hills and never left. Your Destry could have been a descendant of those people.”
    “Well, all I know is I never loved no other.” Otto says this with such clarity, I know it is true.
    The three of us sit and drink our coffee. We’re all thinking about little Destry. Otto had the real thing and lost it. I hope someday my heart will open up and have a love like that.
    The open-air amphitheater for
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
Drama was built next door to the home of the only famous person to ever come from this town, the author John Fox, Jr., who wrote the book that inspired our play. Mr. Fox was a talented loner who lived with his mother and sister. His book of 1908,
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,
was the best-selling novel in the United States prior to
Gone with the Wind
. It’s the first fact you’re told on the tour of the Fox home. The town turned their home into a gift shop, where you can buy key chains, postcards, and corn-husk dolls. Next to it is the theater, and next door to the theater is the original one-room schoolhouse from John Fox, Jr.’s childhood. The state funds to refurbish it haven’t come through, so you can’t go inside, just look through the window. The tour buses roll in to the cul-de-sac, and it sort of landlocks the audienceto spend money. Visitors peruse the gift shop and eat at the Kiwanis Club sloppy-joe stand during intermission.
    I love the Drama because growing up I spent most of my summers backstage. Mama designed and sewed all the costumes for the show.