Even As We Breathe

Cowney sees Essie in the dining hall on the first night. As they discuss their first day, she reveals there is a secret room upstairs. She tells him she has a master key that will get her into any room in the Grove Park Inn. She talks Cowney into going with her the following evening to investigate the room, which is room 447. He goes back and forth with himself all night long because he does not want to lose his job. Similarly, he doesn’t want to let her take the risk by herself. He determines that she is a much more adventurous person than he had imagined: “How did she arrive with such assurance on her very first day when I was still too cautious to even enter the main building willingly” (53). The next night he meets her in the basement. Together they go through the lobby and up the stairs to the secret room and let themselves in. Essie leaves the room briefly to find a working light bulb. They discover 447 is a sitting room or a library rather than a bedroom. They discover a box of dominos and play for hours, discussing what the future holds for each of them.

Cowney digs a hole near the perimeter of the compound surrounding the inn one day and makes a surprising discovery: “Covered as it was in soft dirt, I only recognized its solidity at first. But as my fingers curled around it, I recognized it for what it was—a bone” (58). He takes it with him when he goes back to the dormitory, wraps it up, and puts it in a suitcase so he can take it home, hoping he can find a means through his junior college anatomy textbook to identify it.

Cowney finds a newspaper article about the heroism of a North Carolina Cherokee who apparently survived the Bataan Death March, but whose whereabouts are now unknown. He saves the paper. He tells Essie about the bone he found as they sit in room 447. She is curious and asks him what he knows about it. Cowney wonders if he has told her too much and does not show it to her.

Essie surprises Cowney when he asks if she wants to read the newspaper article, and she is not interested. He remembers he has seen her looking at one piece of stationery over and over and assumes it is a letter from her home in Cherokee: “Probably from someone back home ensuring that her summer paycheck made its way back to Cherokee. I guess she was homesick enough to read even that multiple times” (63).

Cowney brings home the newspaper article. Cowney and Lishie discuss his father’s service in World War I and the fact that his Uncle Bud was with him. His grandmother has told him the story many times, but he asks her to tell it again. As Lishie prepares to tell the story, she says, “Well, now the army and Bud have a little different story, so what I take as truth is really just me piecing the two together” (68). The story goes that a renegade group of enemy soldiers attacked American soldiers in the night. It is likely that Cowney’s father heard a shot and rushed out of the barracks with his gun. There was another American soldier caught in barbed wire and defenseless against the advancing Germans. Cowney’s father got on the far side of the barbed wire and tried to protect the soldier from the advancing enemies. Eventually, the enemies retreated, allowing the Americans to claim the body of Cowney’s father. Unlike those Americans killed in the earlier parts of the war, his father’s body came back from France to North Carolina. Bud arrived home soon afterward to attend services for Cowney’s father.

Cowney wakes on Saturday morning with the smell of something burning. He realizes there is a forest fire outside. Preacherman Davis arrives. He and Cowney close the house against the smoke getting in, which takes all morning. As they eat lunch, Bud arrives and tells Cowney he wants him to drive him to the fire line. Once there, Bud produces a shotgun and says he is going hunting. His plan is to shoot animals as they run away from the burning fire. As Cowney says he does not think this is fair, Bud shoots a doe. Cowney is suspicious about the fire’s origins:

Of course Bud and I both knew these fires weren’t usually the handiwork of Mother Nature. There had been no storms, so it wasn’t like lightning struck a tree and then all hell broke loose. No, these summer fires, especially the drought fires, were set by locals (74).

Bud says he wants Cowney to check with some of the Japanese prisoners at the inn to see if any of them have connections willing to buy the gallbladder of a black bear. He has heard that these organs are highly regarded by the Japanese, who will pay great sums of money for them. Returning to his cabin, Cowney thinks about the possibility of selling some of the bear gallbladders to help him provide for his grandmother.