As he mounted his stallion, he was caught between amusement and humiliation. He knew having a mistress while being attracted to Valinda wasn’t honorable, but it never occurred to him that Josephine would remove herself from the equation and settle the matter so uniquely. He wondered if any of his brothers had ever had the rug pulled out from beneath them this way. Not that he planned to ask. They’d never let him live it down if he did. So, having been dismissed by his mistress while pining for a woman who belonged to another, he rode out of the city to the abandoned plantation his good friend Hugh had purchased, and hoped he had some cognac on hand.
“So, Josie’s replaced you.”
Drake and Hugh were sitting on the front porch of his ramshackle mansion. It had been torched by the former owners to make it uninhabitable when they lost it to the bank during the war. Hugh’s plan was to rebuild it and put it up for sale.
“Yes. To say I’m surprised is an understatement.”
“You always said she was a businesswoman.”
“True, but I never thought I’d be tossed aside like an old bill of sale.”
Hugh sipped his cognac. “The price we pay for underestimating the so-called weaker sex.”
“I suppose.”
Hugh was big and burly like Drake. He was White though, and his hair and beard were red. “You have a replacement in mind?”
“No. Need to lick my wounds first. Although . . .”
Hugh looked over. “Although what?”
Drake told him about Valinda and her intended, to which Hugh responded, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s woman.”
“Good thing he’s not my neighbor then.”
Hugh snorted.
Drake smiled. The two met in ’62, right after the Union invaded New Orleans and closed the ports on the Mississippi River. Hugh came to the city to fight on the side of the Union. He was from an area in East Tennessee staunchly opposed to the Confederacy, where people called themselves Unionists and Heroes of America. Like Drake and his kin, Hugh was a Radical Republican.
Hugh asked, “What is this I hear about Liam Atwater murdering someone?”
“He did. His name was Daniel Downs. The son of my housekeeper.”
“He was Miss Erma’s son?”
Drake nodded. “Killed him in front of his wife and seven-year-old boy, and dumped his body in the swamp.”
“My lord.”
“I’ll be talking to the Council about it. We can’t let him get away with this.”
“No help from the locals or the Army?”
“None.”
“You have something in mind?”
“I do.”
“If you and the Council need help, let me know.” After his father and uncles were hunted down and killed by the Confederate army for refusing to enlist during the war, Hugh had no love for Democrats of any stripe. He and the Union soldiers he’d served with were now doing their best to counteract supremacist violence by protecting freedmen property, schools, and churches. They’d also infiltrated some of the Lost Cause groups, and the Council relied on them for intelligence. In the bloody, three-day riot in Memphis last year, two of Hugh’s childhood friends had been among the forty-six Black people murdered by supremacist supporters. For him, this post-war battle was personal.
“So, what do you want to do about your kitchen?” Hugh asked.
Hugh was a carpenter, too, and he and Drake spent the next hour talking over the plans, etching drawings in the dirt, and speculating on how many additional men they’d need to finish the project. Once Drake’s house was done, they’d focus on rebuilding Hugh’s mansion.
Their plans made, Drake brought up Valinda’s need for a space. “The teacher I’m coveting needs a place to hold her classes. It can be a barn, an old house, a structure of any kind. If you know of anything available, will you let me know?”
“Will an old railroad car do?”
Drake eyed him. “A railroad car?”
“The Army gave me a contract repairing tracks. Any abandoned cars we find along the way are being burned if they’re no longer usable.”
“How many do you have?”
“Found three yesterday.”
Drake was intrigued. “What kind of condition are they in?”
“Wood is badly warped. Some have no doors, but they could be fixed up and they’d be free.”
“What about the tops?”
“A few are partially intact.”
Drake thought it over for a moment. “Do you think we can salvage wood from some of the worst ones and fix up say one or two?”
“I don’t see why not. You trying to make points with the lady?”
“Of course not. I’m only interested in aiding my fellow man.”
Hugh slid across the porch a few inches. “Moving away in case lightning strikes you for lying.”
They laughed, after which Drake asked, “Is there a way you can move them to my land where I can work on them?”
“We have some drays, so yes.”
“How soon?”
“You are eager, aren’t you?” Hugh asked, smiling. “Give me a day or so to make the arrangements, and the men and I will transport them.”
“How much do you want?”
“If you pay the owner of the horses for his time, that’s all we’ll need.”
Drake was deep in thought. “Okay.” He liked the idea but wanted to see the cars to determine if restoring them was a possibility. “Can we ride over to see them?”
“Now?”
“Yes. I don’t want you going through the trouble of moving them if I can’t restore them.”
“Trust me. They’ll be fine.”
“I hope that isn’t the cognac talking.”
“It isn’t. You’ll make points with your teacher. Promise.”
Drake did want to make Valinda happy.
Hugh asked, “Where are you off to now?”
“To the Quarter to make Archer feed me.”
“I have some hens we can cook.” He held up the bottle of cognac. “And we have this fancy French liquor that needs finishing.”
Drake grinned. “Let’s eat.”
After eating his fill, Drake left Hugh and rode to Raimond’s house to attend the Council meeting. Made up of veterans, freedmen, and a few trusted Black Republican party members, the group formed after the surrender to intervene in work contract negotiations, educate people on their rights, and do their best to influence state and local politicians. People in the city knew about their public face, but the more secretive parts of their operation were conducted in shadow.
Drake entered the barn where they were meeting and nodded at the twelve men already inside, four of whom were his brothers. The agenda opened with reports sent in by similar groups across the South on subjects pertaining to land ownership, Black codes, and the overall state of freedmen rights.
Rai began with the good news of the increasing number of schools and colleges being established across the region, most notably Howard College in Washington, named for General Howard, and two in North Carolina: St. Augustine Normal School and Collegiate Institute and the Freedmen’s College of North Carolina.
Drake saw people nodding approvingly.
Rai then turned to more serious matters. “General Sheridan has designated May first as the day Louisiana and other states will begin registering voters both Black and White under the recently passed Reconstruction Acts. The elections will be held to pick delegates to form new Constitutional conventions. Violence is anticipated. Sheridan’s promised to keep the process as safe as possible, but we all know there aren’t enough troops to meet that promise. I’ve sent word asking veterans to volunteer as peacekeepers, and that they pass the word to all veterans they may know.”
Beau added, “And that they be armed.”
Since May first was only two weeks away, Drake asked, “Have you talked to Hugh and his Heroes to request their assistance?”
“No, but if you could, I’d have one less thing to do.�
�
“I’ll speak with him.”
“Thank you.”
They spent a few more minutes discussing the logistics of where the registration sites would be. As Rai pointed out, violence was probably guaranteed because Confederates would be forbidden from adding their names to the ballots as delegates.
Mason Diggs, one of the veterans, asked, “So, does this Reconstruction Act give members of the race the right to vote everywhere?”
“No. Just in the states that rebelled.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Rai said, “Tell that to the fools in Congress.”
They all knew Black voters would hold a numerical advantage in the five states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. If the elected delegates could indeed rewrite their state constitutions, conditions in the South would change for the better. Being a political pessimist, Drake doubted the Confederates would allow them to hold on to power for long, due to the infighting going on within the Republican party, and the ease with which the supremacists were being allowed back into the political arena via President Johnson’s toothless Loyalty Oath.
Rebels who re-pledged their loyalty to the Union were being given back their land and their power. That they’d committed treason and cost the country thousands of lives seemingly meant nothing. Regaining their status meant more Black Codes were being put in place to disenfranchise the newly freed, and splintering the state’s Republican Party into three warring factions. There was the powerful Custom House Ring, the Radicals flocking to the leadership of young Henry Clay Warmoth, and in Drake’s opinion, the most important block of Republicans—the newly freed—because without the support of the third leg, the Republicans’ stool could not stand.
But the opposing forces, made up of the Redeemers and other Lost Cause supporters, were fractioned as well. Louisiana’s Bourbon Democrats vehemently opposed anything benefiting the formerly enslaved—from owning property to establishing schools. The more practical-minded, conservative Democrats, aka Reformers, supported limited rights, but joined the Bourbons in saying no to social equality—even as they held the Bourbon’s hard-line approach responsible for the federal government’s intervention in the state’s politics.
As a result, the state was a powder keg. The Lost Cause Democrats, in cahoots with some Southern Republicans, were determined to restore the old order by any means. Last year’s riot at the state convention, in which the city’s police force and firearms descended on the convention hall and murdered thirty-four Blacks and three White Radicals, stood as a sobering example of how far they were willing to go to achieve their goals.
Raimond continued the meeting by asking, “Does anyone know a man named William Nichols?”
No one did.
Rai explained, “Neither do I, but he’s one of the leaders of the groups confronting the streetcar companies and their star cars.”
As more and more Blacks and allied Whites pushed back against the discriminatory policies, the situation with the streetcars was reaching a boiling point. Many people were attempting to ride the regular cars in spite of the law. In response, White drivers and passengers were routinely dragging the protestors off the cars and assaulting them afterwards. A Black veteran in uniform boarded a Whites-only car with his mother, only to have her “brutally ejected,” according to a newspaper account. In response soldiers had attempted to derail a Whites-only car.
“William Nichols plans to get himself arrested and challenge the legality of the star car system in court. We’ve been given rights, but no one knows what these rights really entail, so this is one way of testing.”
Drake was impressed. “Do you think the court will hear his case?”
“If he gets arrested, I’m not sure the courts will have a choice but to hear it.”
“Did he say when he plans to do this?”
“I’m led to believe it will be soon, so keep your ears open. We’ll support him however we can. Any thoughts or questions?”
When no one spoke up, Rai added, “Now for some humor. Former slave owner Elwood Reynolds wants me to ride out to his place and talk to the freedmen there because they’ve moved into his house.”
Archer chuckled. “What?”
Rai nodded. “He has Black families living in his kitchen, parlor, den, and yesterday a family of five moved into his bedroom. They told him their labor built his place, so they were partial owners.”
Drake said, “They have a point.”
“I agree.”
“Are you going to go?” Diggs asked.
“No. I told him I have no authority, and since the Army has already said they won’t evict them—they said they can’t spare the personnel—he’ll have to work it out on his own.”
All over the South, the former masters were having a hard time adjusting to a way of life that no longer put them on the top rung.
Rai said, “Our most serious concern this evening is Liam Atwater. Drake, would you fill everyone in, please?”
Drake took a few minutes to tell the story and finished with, “His widow and son are owed justice.”
Council member and Republican politician, Kennard Guyton, a longtime friend of the LeVeqs, said, “Killing us has always been akin to killing flies to him. The number of people who died on his place yearly easily surpassed every other slave owner in the area.”
Atwater owned an enormous sugar plantation, and working sugar was by far the most brutal work a slave could be assigned. Most died by the age of twenty-five from infections caused by the serrated leaves, snakebite from the venomous snakes lurking in the fields, and heat exhaustion from having to stir the cane down to syrup in vats heated underneath by flames—vats often positioned in the hot Louisiana sun.
Rai said, “We’ve all heard Drake’s story. All in favor of seeking justice for Daniel Downs’s widow and child, raise your hand.”
Each man complied.
Valinda opened the French doors and stepped out onto the bedroom’s veranda. There was a cooling breeze and the night was alive with the sounds of insects and the faint chorus of calling frogs. She took in a deep breath and felt herself relax.
A messenger from the Sisters arrived after dinner bearing a wire for her from Cole. He and Lenny had docked in Maryland and were making their way to New Orleans by train. He estimated it would take three, maybe four days at the most. She was happy to have him safely back on United States soil and couldn’t wait to see him to hear all about Europe and how the business quest had gone. His pending arrival also meant she’d be leaving New Orleans much earlier than planned and she wasn’t sure what to do about her conflicted feelings. Could he be convinced to stay?
She slapped at a mosquito feasting on her arm for dessert. She returned to her musings, but was soon distracted when Drake’s face shimmered over her mind’s eye. The more she vowed not to think about him, the more she did. She thought back to that moment when she asked that he not kiss her, and part of her was disappointed with the stance she’d taken. It didn’t care about her commitment to Cole, or any of the other barriers she’d erected against Julianna’s bear of a son. It wanted to know what a kiss from him might feel like. Would his lips be hard? Soft? Would the kiss be chaste or have the power to make her melt in the way his words did? She had no answers. The only certainty was that she was sliding down a slippery slope in his direction and couldn’t find a handhold to stop her progress.
She slapped at another mosquito buzzing around her neck, and another that bit her through the sleeve of her gray satin wrapper, so she went inside. The doors had screening though, so she left them open to the breeze and night songs while she sat on a chair in the darkness. She enjoyed the large bedroom with its beautiful furniture, especially the big tub. With Julianna’s permission she’d treated herself to a bath a short while ago and wanted to take it home if she did return to New York.
It was a silly thought, because she doubted she and Cole would be able to afford a place large enough to hold somethin
g so big after they married. People of color were relegated to living in some of the most crowded and least cared-for sections of New York City. None of her acquaintances had a home with room to house such a luxurious tub. And yet, living in the five rooms above her grandmother’s seamstress shop made Valinda and her sister, Caroline, believe they were relatively wealthy growing up because there’d always been food on the table and their father was employed as a barber in the shop owned by Cole’s father. Not until adolescence when she began attending Mrs. Brown’s School for Proper Girls of Color did she encounter girls from families with true wealth—girls whose family employed drivers for the carriages that brought them to school each day; girls who lived in places like Boston and Philadelphia with families rich enough to allow them to board at the school; and girls who arrived with furniture for their rooms, including wardrobes filled with dresses. Val had never owned more than two pairs of shoes at one time—one for every day and the other for church and special occasions. At Mrs. Brown’s, she met girls who possessed five and six pairs of shoes, and an equal number of coats and gloves. She wondered how their familial wealth measured up against the LeVeqs’. She knew that when she and Cole married they’d never even come close. Having a tub like the one in the bathing room would be the stuff of dreams.
As she closed the doors and got into bed, she didn’t dream of luxurious tubs. Instead, she dreamt of being chased by a pack of feral dogs.
She was running, heart pounding with fear while trying to keep ahead of the snarling, growling pack at her back. Their long, loping legs quickly closed the distance and she was knocked to the ground. Screaming and twisting to get away, she grabbed the neck of the closest animal to keep its foaming fangs from sinking into her skin. The dog’s features shifted into the face of attacker Walter Creighton and it smiled evilly. She somehow broke away and was on her feet running again. They gave chase, baying like maddened bloodhounds. Julianna frantically beckoned to her from where she stood on a porch, but the dogs were between them, so Val kept running. The dogs vanished. A wagon appeared. Her father jumped down from the seat. There was fire in his eyes as he wrapped her wrists together tightly with the rope in his hands and tied a lead from the rope to the back of the wagon. He ran back to the seat. Beside him sat a man. He looked at her. Before she could put a name to the vaguely familiar face, the wagon pulled off and she stumbled and fell to the ground. Being dragged over the rough ground, she yelled that her father stop. He didn’t. Crying out, she tried to undo the knots but couldn’t. She managed to get to her feet only to lose her balance again, and again. Exhausted, she surrendered and was dragged away like a broken doll.
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