Poison Spring

by Boggs, Johnny D. ; Abell, Chris;

  “Have you heard from Connor, Anna Louella?” Miss Mary set the tin cup—I bet she always drank from china—on the rough table. The French session had ended.

  Mama stood over the sink, scrubbing the cast-iron cookware clean. Since Papa rode off to war, rarely did Mama eat with us, always cleaning while we ate. I guess she ate when we were finished. She wouldn’t eat now. All the extra food had gone to Mowbray.

  “No, Mary. Not in a few weeks.” She set the last dish out to dry, then began drying her hands with a towel.

  Edith and I exchanged a quick glance before quickly returning to the eggs, which were good, and the potatoes, which weren’t, and the corn mush, which made the potatoes seem savory. A few weeks? It had been months. No letter had come at Christmas. No word since last fall.

  “Well, Mowbray is taking me to Camden today. I could check at Darius’ store, see if there’s a letter for you.”

  Darius was Darius Kroger. He ran the largest mercantile in town, which also served as the post office.

  “Thank you, Mary, but Willard was here yesterday evening. He would have brought a letter had one been waiting for us.” She thought about that, however, still rubbing her hands on the towel though her hands had to have been dry by then. “But if it’s … if it’s no bother.”

  Miss Mary smiled. “It’s no bother at all, Anna Louella. Perhaps ….” Now it was our rich neighbor’s turn to pause. Sipping her tea again, her pinky finger held up just like a real lady, she turned to me, then faced Mama again. “Perhaps Travis could accompany me.”

  I stopped eating. Sat erect. Put my hands underneath the table and crossed as many fingers as possible. I tried not to look at Mama, but couldn’t help myself, though I hoped my face remained passive, not pleading.

  She had tossed the towel aside, and picked up her own cup of tea. “I don’t know …” Mama began.

  Often, Miss Mary let me ride into town with her. There was one shop in town that I dearly loved, and Miss Mary did, too.

  “Oh, let him ride with me, Anna Louella,” Miss Mary said. “It’s a dull ride to Camden with only Mowbray to talk to. And Travis could help me pick out some new fabric for the curtains in our formal parlor. That blue is just so dreadful. Just dreadful. Every time I see it, I think the Yankees are invading. Now, Travis has an eye. He could help me.”

  My fingers uncrossed to grip my thighs. I didn’t think I wanted to be known as the boy with the eye for picking out drapes for a formal parlor. I would much rather have been Lieutenant Travis Ford, spy for the Confederacy, a hero in the mold of Nathanael Greene.

  “Well ….” Mama had weakened. “I suppose it would be all right … if you finish your chores first, young man.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I was up in an instant. “I’ll start right now.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. Finish your breakfast. It’s rude to leave the table when company is still here.”

  I sat back down.

  “I want to go, too, Mama!” Baby Hugh started pouting. “I want to go to town, Miss Mary. Why does Travis always get to go?”

  “Hugh Ford!” Mama snapped.

  Yet Miss Mary remained calm. “Would you rather ride all the way to Camden or stay here and eat cake?”

  “I don’t like carrot cake,” he said.

  “It’s not carrot cake,” Miss Mary said.

  “You said it was.”

  “I said … ‘Is it great to see me, or is it great to see half a carrot cake?’ I did not say I had brought half a carrot cake.”

  He contemplated this. Mother was smiling again.

  “Is it chocolate?” Baby Hugh asked.

  “Mon Dieu,” Mary said, shaking her head, to which Mama said: “Mary Frederick!”

  “No,” Miss Mary told Baby Hugh, ignoring Mama’s reprimand. “It’s pound cake. And you know how well my Sallie makes pound cake.”

  “I’ll stay,” Baby Hugh said.

  “Well, you’re not having cake till you’ve dressed,” Mama said. “And you’ve gotten your chores done, too, young man. And started your lessons.”

  At last, Edith, Baby Hugh, and I were excused, so we left Miss Mary and Mama to their gossip and went about our chores, fetching a bucket of water from the well, gathering more firewood and kindling and moving on to the garden.

  The corn hadn’t been washed away by the rain. Turnips, beans, radishes, and carrots were popping up in Mama’s garden. In fact, even the cornfield looked good, except the spot where Baby Hugh had bogged down a while back. When the last of the chores was finished, we went back inside, nodding a greeting at Mowbray, who sat on the front steps, smiling, waiting for Miss Mary.

  Baby Hugh took his Reader, and Edith and I took ours off the bookshelves, and retired to the front porch.

  “Why does Miss Mary always let you go to town?” Edith asked. Jealous. She was always jealous. “I’m older than you are. I should go. I could pick out a fine fabric for curtains.”

  “I’m good company.” I turned to the poem.

  “You are not.”

  Ignoring her, I began reading where I had left off.

  Baby Hugh was reading aloud, making it hard for me to concentrate, and then he stood up and walked to the steps.

  “Hey, Mister Mowbray,” he said, and thrust the Eclectic Spelling Book in front of the slave. “What’s this here word?”

  Edith and I practically leaped up.

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” the slave said.

  “D-o-s-t,” Baby Hugh spelled it out.

  “Dost,” Edith said. “It’s dost. It’s old English. It means does.”

  “Well, that don’t make a lick of sense,” Baby Hugh said.

  “I reckon not,” Mowbray said, “but I’d take your sister’s word for it. She’s right smart.”

  “You ever heard that word?”

  “Dost?” Mowbray chuckled. “I reckon not.”

  Baby Hugh shoved the book under the slave’s nose. “That’s it!”

  “Hugh Ford!” Edith snapped in horror. I just stood there, mouth open.

  “Is that so? Now I reckon I have to take your word for it, Master Hugh.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Hugh! You come up here right now.” But Edith wasn’t moving. I guess she was curious. Same as Baby Hugh. Same as me.

  “Well, it’s this way, Master Hugh. I can’t read.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Not at all.”

  “But you’re older than ….”

  “Than Methuselah? Reckon I am.”

  “And you still can’t read.”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, it’s easy.” Hugh turned the pages. “See. This here is an A. That’s the capital A, and that’s the baby a. And that there’s a picture of … what?”

  “Looks like an axe,” Mowbray said.

  “That’s right. Axe starts with an A. And you see this one? That’s a C.”

  “Looks like a cat, Master Hugh.” Mowbray’s voice trembled, and I decided it was time to move.

  I left Edith standing, holding her Reader, and moved to the step. “Hugh,” I said softly, dropping the Baby. “You need to leave Mowbray alone.”

  “I’m just learning him his letters,” he said.

  “Yes, but, well ….” I didn’t know how to explain to him.

  “It is against the law to teach a slave to read.” Miss Mary stood underneath the dogtrot, Mama beside her.

  I tugged Baby Hugh up, away from Mowbray, who rose and handed his empty dishes to Edith. Glancing back at him, I thought I detected fear in his eyes as he faced Miss Mary.

  “You ready to go now, Miss Mary?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said stiffly. “Master Travis will accompany us to town and back.”

  The thought of going to Camden had excited me. Now I dreaded the jo
urney.

  Chapter Four

  “Red would be a nice color for drapes,” I said.

  “Garnet or cherry?” Miss Mary said.

  “Garnet.” I had no idea what the difference between garnet and cherry was.

  “Well, let’s see if Darius Kroger has something in garnet.”

  We fell silent. The carriage rolled along the road, splashing through puddles, Miss Mary looking straight ahead, Mowbray holding the leather lines, keeping the two grays at a steady pace. I watched the passing pine trees.

  As things turned out, the ride wasn’t bad at all. Miss Mary never brought up the fact that she could have sent Baby Hugh to prison. Well, maybe not, but she did not rebuke Mowbray, and seemed to have forgotten everything by the time we reached Camden.

  Sight of the town revived everyone.

  It always did.

  Camden was a pretty city—the biggest I had ever seen—standing atop the red bluffs overlooking the bends of the Ouachita River. The streets wound about, over bridges across ravines, lined by giant oaks and pines. We rode down Washington Street, one of the few streets named after U.S. presidents that the city officials had not changed. At the corner of Washington and Adams, where the Ouachita Hotel stood guard, someone had x’d out Adams on that street sign, and painted above it Davis. Polk Street was now Lee Street. Jefferson had become Stonewall. Madison was Cleburne, named after one of Arkansas’s favorite sons of the Confederacy. Taylor Street had been turned into McCulloch, after the Texas general killed at Elkhorn Tavern. Jackson Street remained Jackson Street, either because Andrew Jackson had been a Southerner by birth or perhaps because the city fathers had decided Jackson could refer to the late Stonewall Jackson, even though he already had Stonewall Street renamed in his honor.

  We didn’t reach Monroe Street, or whatever it had now been christened, for which I was grateful. Uncle Willard’s Trader House was down Monroe at the edge of town.

  The streets might have new names, but Camden looked the same. At first.

  For a boy on a farm and sawmill in the country, Camden excited me.

  This was “the Cincinnati of Arkansas”—bustling with men and women, black and white, with merchants, vendors, and ordinary people. White houses lined the residential streets. Walls of cotton bales lined the front of the warehouses and the wharfs, waiting to be shipped to ….

  To where?

  Yankees controlled the Mississippi River. They had a blockade along the Texas coast. Maybe that cotton would never be sold. Maybe it would never leave Camden. I wondered if those bales were the same ones I had seen the last time Miss Mary had brought me to Camden. That had been … when? … back in December, a week before Christmas?

  Then I saw something I hadn’t seen on my last visit. Filthy, bearded soldiers in butternut rags, straining to get cannon and caisson out of the mud on Jackson Street. An officer on a blue roan barked orders, brandishing a saber, cursing the men and two mules that seemed disinterested in pulling their load out of the quagmire. Other soldiers walked along boardwalks. A patrol of six men, in blue shell jackets and ostrich-plumed Hardee hats galloped past us, and I began inventing adventures for those men, replacing the captain with the scar across his cheek with my twenty-three-year-old imaginary hero.

  Leaning out the window, I looked behind me, and, sure enough, I saw more soldiers. Some in gray. Others in butternut. Many in blue denim, tan duck, or dirty muslin. The flag flapped in the wind, and standing atop the roof of the Ouachita Hotel were three sentries, one of them peering off toward Little Rock through a spyglass.

  “Don’t get muddy, Travis!” Miss Mary called. “Your mother would have us both ruing the day.”

  I slipped back inside the carriage.

  “I didn’t think town would be so busy,” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” I agreed. “Me, either.”

  Camden had grown, sure enough. The way Papa told it, Camden had started down along the river around 1830 when a trader built a cabin to trade with the hunters in the area. Ouachita County had been formed in 1842, and merchants, farmers, settlers, and sawyers like my father had arrived. When Papa arrived with Willard in 1848, Camden boasted a population of eight hundred. Camden had grown into the second-largest city in Arkansas, just behind Little Rock. More than two thousand white people lived here. There had to be that many soldiers in town on that April afternoon.

  We rode past more cotton bales, more wagons, more soldiers, more people. Past the Planter’s Hotel, the Ouachita Herald, Riley’s grocery, Woodward & Heydenfeldt’s attorney’s office, Dr. McElrath’s, the Camden Foundry Company, Jennings’ marble quarry, a livery, wagon yard, another grocery, Morgan’s Apothecary, even Kroger’s Mercantile & Post Office. To my surprise, the buggy kept right on going down the street.

  I glanced at Miss Mary, who just stared ahead. So I returned to watching the people, taking in the scent of town, of baking bread, of mud and manure, of cigar and pipe smoke, and of the stink of soldiers marching through the bog.

  “Here, Mowbray,” Miss Mary said, and I turned back as the slave pulled on the lines, eased the carriage off the street, and set the brake. He was up and in the mud in an instant, helping me from the carriage, swinging me onto the boardwalk, then assisting Miss Mary onto the plank that served as a bridge across the mud that was Washington Street.

  “I could use something new to read, Travis,” Miss Mary said. “What about you?” Without waiting for my reply, she opened the door, telling Mowbray that we would not be long and if the constable gave him any trouble about hogging the street with the carriage, he should remind him that this was Miss Mary Frederick’s carriage, and that was Miss Mary Frederick of the Cincinnati Fredericks whose father was Jonathan Frederick and need anyone say more.

  “Come along, Travis.” She was holding open the door for me. Miss Mary was. Miss Mary of the Cincinnati Fredericks and before that the Fredericks of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Excitedly I entered J.D. Mendenhall’s, the reason I loved coming to Camden with Miss Mary. Even if Uncle Willard thought she was an addle-brained fool lady, crazy as a loon. But she knew me. Probably better than Mama or Papa.

  “Why, Miss Mary Frederick,” Mr. Mendenhall said in his English accent. “What a delight to have you in our store again.” Removing his monocle, he stepped away from the shelf he was sorting through, and, bowing, he lifted Miss Mary’s proffered hand to his lips. “And young Travis Ford. What may I do for you this fine afternoon?”

  I stuttered.

  “Look around, Travis,” Miss Mary said. “I shall do the same. Do you have the latest Home Journal, Mister Mendenhall?”

  As the proprietor began apologizing about the difficulty of getting current magazines these days, but saying he did have a new translation of Homer’s The Iliad, I wandered among the towering shelves. A short while later, the Englishman and the wealthy woman were conversing in French. Quickly, however, I no longer cared what language they were speaking. I wasn’t listening because I was too focused on all the books.

  To me, there was nothing better than browsing through a bookstore, especially Mr. J.D. Mendenhall’s. He never said anything. Maybe he knew I couldn’t afford a book, not those yellow-backed dreadfuls, or even a magazine or newspaper. He let me sit in one of the jury chairs by the window, reading whatever I wanted to read. Sometimes he even brought me a book while he and Miss Mary chatted and sipped tea.

  I loved the smell of books, of paper, of leather. I loved the feel of a book in my hands, the gilt shining like gold, the touch of the paper, the smoothness of the leather covers. I loved the feeling I got when I opened a book for the first time, the noise of the spine cracking, the stiff pages. Mostly I loved reading. The adventure. The promise. The joy of learning something new. I would pick up a copy, read the title, and imagine what it must feel like for the author to see his name on the spine. I would imagine seeing my name. I picked up a book and silently mouthed: “Jane Ey
re by Travis Ford.” Then I moved to the shelf I knew all so well.

  The Partisan. The Yemassee. Border Beagles. The Tennessean’s Story. Eutaw.

  I had read everything William Gilmore Simms had ever written, fiction and nonfiction, or at least ’most everything J.D. Mendenhall had ever sold. Then I remembered something. I looked, fingering the spines, studying the titles, then sighed with disappointment. The Cassique of Kiawah was gone. I imagined Mr. Mendenhall had sold the one I had been reading on my visits to town with Miss Mary. That was one I would never finish, unless he got another copy to sell. It was William Gilmore Simms, Esquire, who had introduced me to South Carolina’s Swamp Fox in The Life of Francis Marion. And Nathanael Greene in The Life of Nathanael Greene, Major-General in the Army of the Revolution. He wrote of adventure, and romance, of the olden times of the Revolutionary War in the South, and the frontier of the Carolinas, Alabama, and Mississippi. I had even enjoyed Simms’ poetry.

  Other books were missing. In fact, the shelves, usually overflowing, had plenty of spaces. It resembled Mama’s cupboard back home.

  The few titles of Simms I had already read, but that was all right. I moved on to Dumas.

  I loved Simms, but he wrote about the South, a South not that far removed from my current home and times. Dumas, however, wrote about France and Europe, and that was a long, long way from Washington County, Arkansas.

  I had devoured The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, and The Count of Monte Cristo, but where I had hoped to find The Black Tulip, of which I had read the first twenty or thirty pages, I found only one book, and it wasn’t even Dumas. It was something from Charles Dickens. I had heard of Dickens, but had never read anything by him, although Mr. Mendenhall had suggested that I try David Copperfield or A Christmas Carol. This book, however, was titled A Tale of Two Cities.

  With no new Simms or Dumas to guide my way, I walked to the window with Charles Dickens, and read.

  BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE.

  Chapter 1.

  THE PERIOD.