Pocohantas Hale – A Knowing

Now this ain’t written in no courthouse ledger, so don’t go lookin’ for it there. This is the way old women tell it when the menfolk have wandered off and the kettle’s been on long enough to steep truth instead of tea.
They say Pocahontas Hale came to Bristol in the years when war had men bleedin’ out faster than prayers could reach ’em. She didn’t arrive loud. Didn’t arrive claimin’ anything. Just showed up with a basket of roots, a shawl black as crow feathers, and hands that already knew how to stop death from rushin’ in where it didn’t belong.
Some folks called her Cherokee. Some called her witch. Some called her doctor when their sons were laid out and the surgeons had given up. She worked in a Confederate hospital for a spell, makin’ salves that knit flesh when the sawbones shook their heads. They didn’t ask her what she used or where she learned it — they only asked if it worked.
And it did.
But here’s the thing folks don’t say out loud: women like her don’t wander into war zones by accident. She came because war hides things. War makes room for women who don’t fit. War keeps secrets better than peace ever could.
And when the blood dried up and the uniforms moved on, Pocahontas Hale stayed. Not because she was stuck — but because she was plantin’ something that needed rootin’ in chaos first.