Deliveries of Amazon packages spike and businesses in the surrounding counties have come to rely on biannual surges to their sales. If you want to make a quick trip to the bank or the post office, just forget trying on these two days. Twice a year, December 1st and June 1st, enrolled members of the EBCI receive a per capita gaming revenue disbursement. The Credit Union is located less than a hundred feet from the official border of the Qualla Boundary-just across from the welcome sign.

The entrance to the Qualla Boundary, governmental seat of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), is marked with a large wooden sign that reads, “Welcome to the Cherokee Indian Reservation.” On June 1st, 2020, a long line of vehicles, many of which had the official seal of the EBCI on their license plates, snaked its way around the Mountain Federal Credit Union parking lot and drive thru, spilling out into Highway 441’s summer tourist traffic. Except I forgot the one truism of being a tribal member-it ain’t about you. I could make my tribe proud and leave a legacy in letters by putting to use the hours of solitude. I could sit at home and make my very best attempt not to be a one-hit-wonder. Months of socially approved quarantine sounded like a dream come true. Amid a pandemic, I became the only published novelist member of my tribe (tribe meaning American Indian, not hipster yoga besties).

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