The Beaver Circuit

When a tooth comes loose in Cherokee country, you don't sit still. You lace up your shoes. You face East and you RUN — around the house, four full laps, shouting at the top of your lungs: "Beaver! Put a new tooth in my jaw!" By the fourth lap, lungs burning, legs shaking, a voice comes from the roofline. "I heard you," Beaver says. "All four times." He has been building things since the rivers were young. Dams. Lodges. Whole worlds from sticks and mud. But a child's tooth? That is his favorite material.