by Londyn Skye
In the face of the hellish world James was being tortured in, Lily was the sole reason he forced his eyes to open every morning. She was the reason he bothered to inhale and exhale. She was his motivation to put one foot in front of the other, as he marched miles and miles on blistered feet from one camp to the next. She was the reason he accepted the harsh weather conditions, the deprivation of food and fluids, his growing collection of scars, and the irreparable mental trauma. In honor of Lily and Rose, it became his personal mission to help ensure that there would never be another baby, like his, who was born and died as a slave. Every cannon he launched was so that no other family would be torn apart because of business deals and greed. Every bullet he fired was to permanently cease the legality of shackling and whipping the innocent. Every hatchet he swung was to see every Negro auction closed forever. James marched, starved, slayed, and mercilessly killed without remorse, knowing that it was a means to freedom for Lily and others, who had suffered far worse for centuries at the hands of the very country they had helped to build. James’s courage, pride, and willingness to die for what he believed in, made him stand out as a man worth leading and encouraging the masses. He, therefore, quickly climbed the army ranks from a private to a revered lieutenant. He led by his inspiring examples of loyalty to the vow he made to fight until the bitter end, or until he was carried away among the fallen, in his pursuit of a utopian America that was truly united.
Three years of living an untamed barbaric life had naturally toyed with James’s sanity, though. In times when he was emotionally teetering, memories of Lily and her music had a mysterious way of materializing in his mind, just in time to coax him back from leaping over the cliffs of insanity. The beautiful visions of Lily dressed elegantly, playing her songs at a grand piano, had the power to damn near bring a smile to James’s face while drowning in a sea of dying soldiers and madmen wielding axes. While tightly gripped by the ever-lasting effects of Lily’s altruistic love and music, nothing seemed to break Lieutenant James “Michael” Adams … except for mail-call.
As often as he could, James sent a package to William. Inside was always a brief note to William and another large sealed envelope that he instructed William to store away for Lily. Lily’s envelope contained weeks’ worth of daily letters that James had written for her. Inspired by Levi’s writings, his letters read much like a diary. The content was an array of topics. He wrote about his experiences as a soldier, the good and the bad, as well as the places he had traveled. He elaborated on all the constant dreams he had of her and Rose, how her music inspired him, how he desperately missed her, fond memories of them from the past, and his grand hopes for their future. He ended every letter to her the same:
I pray every day that God will keep you safe and see you back into my arms soon. Until then, I promise to you my eternal love and loyalty.
Forever your soldier,
Lieutenant Adams
Iron Army Brigade of the East
James always received a response to his letters in return. Such was the case on this cold October day during mail-call. The moment his name was called, three common recurring questions began spinning in his mind: Had Lily been found? Had William received correspondence from her? Was the letter being handed to him actually from Lily? The potential answers always had James’s hands shaking uncontrollably as his envelope was handed to him. Considering that President Lincoln had technically emancipated all slaves, James’s hopes of hearing from or about Lily had been especially high as of late.
James refused to glance at the letter after it was handed to him. As always, he wanted to be alone in his tent before he even looked at who it was from. His hopeful heart still pounding, he sat down on his cot, closed his eyes, and blew out a nervous breath. “Please God,” he whispered, before opening his eyes again. His hands still shaking, he turned the letter over. He sighed when he saw the name of the sender. He was not unhappy to hear from William, but the heartache of not seeing Lily’s name suddenly drained his eagerness to read the contents that lie within the envelope. James slowly opened it and pulled the letter out. After years of receiving William’s letters, he already knew the opening line:
Lieutenant Adams,
I hope this letter finds you well…
Through William’s letters of the past, James had learned that he and Griff continued to search for Lily for several more months before suspending their efforts. After taking a month off, Griff and the bandits regrouped and continued to search in areas of the country that were not war-torn. William stayed behind with Isabel, not wanting to leave her while the country was in such dire straits. Isabel was especially distraught because it had been years since she had seen or heard from Elijah. William had also written to James about the fact that Wilson and Emerson had joined another brigade in the north, both voluntarily serving in their mother’s honor. William also always relayed any political information regarding the war that he thought would be helpful to the Iron Army Brigade. Such verbiage was indeed included in the letter that James now held. Today, though, James glossed over that information and his eyes quickly found their way to yet another familiar sentence included in every letter from William for the past three years:
I regret to inform you that I have no new news as to Lily’s whereabouts …
Without fail, reading those words always instantly cast James into an emotional pit of despair. It always felt to him like he had lost Lily all over again. He had numbed himself to all of the slayings he had witnessed, but there was simply no numbing himself to the fact that his wife seemed to have vanished without a trace. It was the one thing during the war that made him want to immediately hurl himself over the cliffs of insanity.
Austin walked into the tent and saw the way that James sat on the edge of his cot, his face buried in his hands with the crumpled letter beside him. Austin was all too familiar with that body language and the nasty attitude that accompanied it. “No news of Lily, huh?” he asked James, despite knowing the answer.
Without a word or so much as a glance in Austin’s direction, James snatched his satchel and left. He stepped outside of his tent into the putrid smell of blood and death lingering in the air like a toxic fog. No matter how much the wind blew, the stench remained pungent and ever-present. The suffocating atmosphere prevented James from taking a much-needed deep breath to help calm his nerves. His nerves were further frayed as he walked past the overcrowded medic tent of delirious men with missing limbs and pus-filled gangrene wounds, who were screaming, groaning, and begging to be shot to alleviate their suffering. Normally, James was putting his medical training to work and assisting with the battered bodies of his fellow soldiers. But, today, the torturous sounds coming from within the medic tent only made his mind pick up pace as it raced toward the cliffs of insanity. He plugged his ears to drown out the sounds, and then began banging his fists against the sides of his head as his mind continued to spiral out of control. Just as he was nearing insanity’s edge, Lily’s music suddenly erupted in his mind and snagged him by the arm, just as he began to fall. The incessant banging on his temples stopped immediately and the sound of dying men no longer grated his ears. He froze, closed his eyes, and tilted his head back to let the sun warm his skin, while Lily’s beautiful melody warmed him inside and caressed his damaged mind. He took a long deep breath as if the horrid odor in the air was suddenly non-existent. He slowly opened his eyes and exhaled as Lily’s music decrescendoed and faded away. He then proceeded to walk to a nearby creek for his post-letter calming ritual. He sat underneath a tree and listened momentarily to the flowing water. He reached inside his satchel and pulled out a children’s book that he now knew by memory. After four years of toting it and turning its pages, it was now rather tattered, but it had become too sacred to James for him to part ways with.
Just before joining the war, James had gone back to Ava’s little town to place fresh flowers at Rose’s grave. By then, he had finished reading Levi’s journals and now knew every intricate detail of h
is love affair with Maya. After learning about the tribulations of his life, James realized that he had aspired to be the sort of father to Rose that Levi wished he could have been to little Lily. His respect for Levi’s sentimental books made James feel as though they were worth keeping safe in the bunker beneath Ava’s barn, with the rest of his treasured belongings. James could not bring himself to part ways with the Little Mermaid children’s book, though. Whenever his mind was frayed, it gave him peace to read it aloud to Rose.
Convinced that Rose could hear him from heaven, James now read the Little Mermaid aloud to her as a post mail-call ritual, to help soothe his irritated nerves. In the midst of a brutal war, he just wanted a few minutes to feel bathed in innocence. He wanted to keep Rose’s memory alive and feel as close to her as the hour she had spent nestled against his chest. Reliving that memory, while reading a story about two people from different worlds, who triumphed despite their obstacles, was exactly what James needed to renew his hope after every frustrating mail-call incident.
As always, James tilted his head back toward the sky when he finished reading. “I love you, my little angel,” he said as a tear slid down the side of his face.
Unbeknownst to James, he had a secret admirer watching him, who was warmed by the secret ritual for his daughter, much like the admirer Levi once had during a secret ritual of his own …
Chapter Eighteen
August 17th, 1838
I never knew I could get so much joy from picking apples…
Helplessly drawn to Maya’s jubilant mood, Levi laid his rake down and walked over to her as she brushed a horse in the barn. “I just gotta know what’s got you smilin’ that big beautiful smile this early in the mornin’?” he asked her, a smile now on his face as well.
Maya stopped tending to the horse, looked Levi in the eyes, and touched him on the cheek. “This man right here.” She gently kissed him on the lips. “Definitely smilin’ about this incredible man,” she whispered before walking out of the barn to tend to her other chores.
Maya’s bold confession left Levi standing there happily baffled, now unable to stop smiling himself. He was unaware that Maya happened to wake up earlier than usual that morning. On the way to retrieve a glass of water, she had glanced out of her cottage window. In the pre-dawn hours, she caught sight of a shadow walking toward the orchard. When her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she realized it was Levi carrying a ladder. She stood there and watched as he then used the ladder to climb up into an apple tree. He picked ten apples and dropped them to the ground and then went to an orange tree and did the same. Such a thing may have been meaningless to others, but Maya suddenly felt tears cascading down her cheeks.
For nearly the entire summer, Lily had woken up and dashed out to the orchard with the basket Levi had given her. She filled it with apples and oranges and then proudly handed them out to the other slaves on the plantation. It was a ritual little Lily looked forward to, but never knew that the ease of her morning mission was because of her father. After weeks of Levi’s secret pre-dawn ritual, the bottom of his fruit trees were bare. He now had to resort to climbing a ladder to pick from the top. Until glancing out her window, Maya had no idea that every apple and orange that Lily collected was put there by a man who was secretly going to extreme measures that proved he loved his daughter dearly. Maya accepted right then that there was nothing she could ever do or say to stop Levi Collins from expressing his love for Lily in any small ways he could manage. Such a thing warmed Maya enough to kiss him gently on the lips before she exited the barn to finish her other chores.
That same warm feeling was completely absent in another woman who just so happened to witness Levi’s secret ritual that morning also. “Awfully, odd how many apples and oranges are fallin’ off ‘a them trees every day here lately,” Emily stated to Levi as he sat down to eat lunch that afternoon.
Levi was just about to take a bite of his food but paused and looked up to meet his wife’s scathing eyes. Her words and the smug look on her face made him instantly lose his appetite.
Several times throughout the summer, Emily had roused briefly from her drunken stupor, and noticed Levi slipping out of bed earlier than usual. Curious about the odd trend, Emily had managed to get her alcohol-infused brain to carry her feet toward the window after Levi left on this particular morning. When she finally gathered the wherewithal to focus her eyes, she watched him intently, certain that she would catch him headed to Maya’s cottages for sinful reasons. However, she was confused to find him picking apples and oranges. She did not understand the purpose of her husband’s odd routine, until she just so happened to be sweeping the porch later and saw Lily running toward the orchard, placing the fruit in her basket. Emily then glanced over at her husband and watched his reaction.
Much like he did every morning, Levi was taking pause to watch Lily collect all the fruit she assumed had fallen from the orchard trees. He was leaning against the frame of the barn door with his arms folded across his chest. He had a prideful smile on his face as he watched how Lily meticulously figured out just how much weight she could carry. She added or removed fruit from her basket and lifted it to be sure she could haul her load with ease. When it was just right, she then trotted off on her quest to hand fruit out to everyone. The daily tradition brought a genuine smile to Levi’s face, in much the same way that rainbows did for Maya. It lifted his spirits knowing that he was finally able to do something special for Lily, even if it was in secret … a secret that turned his wife’s stomach as she watched on from the porch.
The sneer on Emily’s face was just as prominent as Levi’s smile in that moment. Emily hated how much pride she saw in her husband’s eyes when he watched Lily. She hated that Levi was showing any interest in his daughter at all, especially on a level that hinted at the fact that he loved her. She wanted nothing more than to turn her husband’s joy into a misery that was equal to her own. That was precisely her goal as he sat down to eat his lunch. “Looks like I’m gonna have to go out to that orchard every mornin’ now and collect them apples myself, before your little mulatto monsta’ gets to ‘em,” she told Levi, glaring harshly at him while he sat at the kitchen table. “I’m gonna scold ’er good the next time she touches what ain’t hers.”
“She’s a three-year-old child!” Levi yelled, slamming his sandwich back down on his plate.
“And I’m gonna whip that little thief like a grown woman the next time I catch ’er stealin’ my fruit!”
Levi suddenly flung his plate against the wall and stood up. “If you so much as step toward Lily with a whip in your hand, I promise, she won’t be the female gettin’ the most brutal whippin’ of her life!”
“You don’t have the intestinal fortitude to lay a hand on me, you weak cowardly son of a bitch!” Emily fired back. “In the bizarre case that you grow a big enough pair a’ testicles to touch me, I swear to God, I’ll mar your little demon until she’s unrecognizable! The sight ‘a her will give you nightmares for the rest ‘a your pathetic life!”
Levi overturned the entire kitchen table and stepped toward Emily. “Touch that little girl, and you’ll be the only one in this house with permanent nightmares.” He suddenly leaned in within an inch of Emily’s face. “I warn you not to test me,” he snarled through gritted teeth, glaring at her with pure hatred.
Emily swore she was staring into the eyes of the devil. Having never once seen such evil in her husband’s eyes, she nearly wet herself after his threat. “Just keep that little heathen away from my orchard!” she replied, trembling with fear.
Levi huffed, stepped past Emily, and stormed out of the back-kitchen door. His rage led him to slam the door so hard, he shattered the glass in the windowpane. Too enraged to even look back, Levi kept on walking to the barn. The beautiful music in his mind inspired by Maya’s earlier kiss had now transitioned into violent visions inspired by his wife. He jumped on his horse and sped off the plantation to escape the rage-driven urge that would have immediately cea
sed oxygen from escaping his wife’s trachea ever again.
Emily had never seen or heard such savagery from a man who typically absorbed her threats without so much as changing the expression on his face. Genuinely fearing her husband for the first time ever, Emily’s body finally relaxed when he was gone, and so too did her bladder. She stepped over the puddle and bolted up the stairs in search of a liquid that would quickly refill it. She slammed and locked her bedroom door and retrieved what she needed from the back of her closet. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she sat on the bed and raised the bottle of whiskey toward her mouth. Once she pressed it to her lips, her tears ceased quicker than a baby siphoning from its mother’s breast.
Levi did not return to the farm until late that evening. Even then, he slept in the guest bedroom for the night. He needed as much distance as possible between him and the woman who had just caused his beautiful mind to erupt with the ugliest images of violence he had ever envisioned.
The following morning, Lily darted over to the orchard with the basket her father had given her. For nearly half an hour, she searched for her little orange and red treasures, but she could not find any. When Lily failed to return with her fruit, as usual, Maya walked to the orchard in search of her. She found Lily humming and playfully drawing in the dirt with a stick, her basket just as bare as the ground. “What you doin’, baby?” Maya asked her.