Poison Spring

by Boggs, Johnny D. ; Abell, Chris;

  Because this is my home, Mama had told our visitors. Our home.

  Only it no longer felt like a home, but I couldn’t describe in words how I felt. Some writer, I was, some storyteller.

  Edith mumbled something in her sleep. Baby Hugh rolled over, which stopped his snores for a moment, but not for long.

  Downstairs, I heard Miss Mary call out: “Daddy?” I sat up, then Miss Mary let out a little moan, and she was quiet again. I started to lay back down, but Baby Hugh had rolled over again, hogging the bed we shared. So I just sat on the bed, thinking, wondering, hoping, and praying.

  Two or three minutes later, I heard Mama’s returning footsteps on the porch. The bed squeaked, Mama sighed, and I rose to go downstairs. By then, it had to be 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning, but my brother and sister did not stir. Not that I could blame them. It had been an exhausting evening.

  When I reached the ground floor, I turned to see Mama throw back the covers, get out of her bed, and move unsteadily to the rocking chair. She collapsed into it, bowed her head, clasped her hands. At first I thought the weight of everything that had happened last night—early this morning, rather—had just cracked her armor, but, as I moved closer, I knew it was something else.

  I stopped.

  Miss Mary still lay in the bed, as she had since … since when? I remembered the sound I had heard minutes earlier. I could envision what had happened. “Daddy?” she had called out, then sunk back onto the pillows, and groaned. But had it been a groan? Or had it been death’s rattle?

  Now her eyes were open, staring up at the loft, and her face looked gray, but she was smiling.

  Mama began to cry. Just choking sobs, but, when she heard me, her hands went down, her head went up, and she pushed herself out of the rocking chair. “Hugh … Edith …?” Her head shook. “I mean Travis.” She came to me then, dropping to her knees, pulling me close to her.

  I cried, too, sobbing on my mother’s shoulder, feeling her hands and arms on my back, wanting her to clutch me forever.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”

  “She’s … she’s … she’s … dead?” I couldn’t believe it.

  I felt Mama’s head nod. She sniffed. “Her heart just gave out. The poor woman. It just gave out. Now, come on.” She stood, keeping her hands on my shoulders, looking down, while I tried to make those blasted tears stop.

  Miss Mary Frederick, I had come to understand, knew me better than my mother or my siblings. She knew more about me than I knew myself, and she had been the one true friend our family really had since Papa had gone off to war.

  Now she was gone.

  “It’s all right, Travis.” Mama put a finger under my chin, and lifted my head. “She’s in a better place now. Away from all these troubles. I need you to be strong.”

  Which just made me cry even more, and again she dropped to my side, holding me, kissing the side of my head.

  “I’m … I’m … sup- … supposed … to be ….” I sniffed. “I’m supposed to … be … the … man … of the house. Now that … Papa’s … not here.” I wiped my nose, my cheeks. Me, who had vowed never to cry again.

  “You are the man of the house,” Mama whispered. “You most certainly are.”

  Outside, mules snorted and a wagon trace jingled. Mama stood, and somehow I stopped crying. “Stay here,” Mama ordered, and she went to the mantel, grabbed the Spiller and Burr, and moved toward the door. “And this time, I mean it.”

  She didn’t carry the revolver loosely, already had pulled back the hammer and slipped a finger into the trigger guard. Percussion caps were on the nipples. She went through the front door, and pulled it shut behind her.

  The wagon and mules drew closer to the house, and I heard men talking, a few laughs. Then a friendly voice that I recognized.

  “Hello, Miz Anna,” Jared Greene said.

  “Sergeant,” Mama said, not calling him by his Christian name. A metallic click told me that Mama had lowered the hammer on the .36.

  “Madam, I bid you good day.” I knew that voice, too. Lieutenant Bullis. “We do not wish to impose, but we are ….”

  “Searching for corn,” Mama said.

  “Er … well … yes. Um. Well, it’s this way, madam … you are Secessionist, traitors to the American flag, and it is ….”

  That must have been the speech he had been giving to every farm he had stopped at, but his tone let me know that his heart wasn’t in it.

  “If you find corn in the crib or anywhere else on this property, sir, you are welcome to it. Do your search. The crib’s over there. Try not to trample the sprouts in our garden. Or do you want those, too, to feed your horses?”

  I heard her moving toward the door, then Lieutenant Bullis began barking orders to his men, and there was more movement, more noise. Though I didn’t catch exactly what he was saying, Sergeant Greene began talking to Mama.

  Baby Hugh, coming down the ladder, and Edith, wiping sleep from her eyes and getting ready to descend, caught my attention. I sucked in a deep breath, wiped my eyes hard, and went to the bed where Miss Mary lay. I reached over and put a finger and thumb just above Miss Mary’s eyes. For a moment I hesitated. I’d never done this before, but I didn’t want Baby Hugh to see her like this. Her forehead felt cold, and, as I looked into her eyes, a chill raced up my spine. She couldn’t see me, but it looked as if she were seeing into my soul. Like, I guess, she always had. My fingers went down, and her eyelids closed forever.

  “What the heck is you doing with Miss Mary?” Baby Hugh asked, and I jerked my hand away, turning.

  “Nothing. Just seeing ….”

  Edith gasped. I guess she saw how red my eyes were. I sniffed.

  Baby Hugh stepped closer to the bed, and then Edith began crying, and I turned, pointing at the open door. I tried to tell my sister and brother that the Yankees were back, tried to get their attention away from Miss Mary Frederick, but Edith continued to cry, and Baby Hugh ran to the bed, and reached up for Miss Mary. I grabbed him, pulled him away, only now he was wailing. Edith fell to her knees, sobbing hysterically, but not as hard as Baby Hugh.

  We fell into the rocking chair, almost tipping it over. I held him as Mama had held me, somehow managing to turn and free an arm so I could motion for Edith to come. We were crying again, three kids together, a dead neighbor in my parents’ bed, and a bunch of Yankees outside.

  “She can’t be dead!” Hugh screamed. “She can’t be dead!”

  “Her heart gave out,” I told him. “She’s in a better place now.” My words—Mama’s words, really—offered as much comfort to my kid brother as they had brought to me when Mama told me.

  The door opened, and Mama came through, revolver in her left hand. She pitched it onto the bed beside Miss Mary and came toward us. Hugh freed himself from me, backed out of the rocker, and ran to Mama, who swept him into her arms.

  “Miss Mary ain’t dead. She can’t be dead. Tell me she ain’t dead, Mama,” he pleaded.

  Mama kissed his forehead. Then tears blinded me, and I just couldn’t be a man. I cried, while holding my sister and listening to our brother wail.

  “She can’t be dead,” he cried over and over.

  “It’s all right, Hugh. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

  “No. No! She can’t be dead. I never … I never … got to thank her. For all them cookies. All them cakes and pies. I never ever once thanked her for all the food she give us!”

  “Miz Anna.” Sergeant Jared Greene stood in the doorway, hat in his hand. He saw us, then glanced toward the bed that held Miss Mary, and I think he understood.

  His presence seemed to stop our tears, even Baby Hugh’s. Maybe sight of the big man of color in Yankee blue standing in our doorway snapped him out of it. He clung tighter to Mama, who managed to lift him as she rose, the way she had done when he
had been just a baby, and not a seven-year-old.

  “Jared,” Mama said, as she took Hugh over to the bed, and set him on the edge. She wiped his face, brushed away her own tears, and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Thank her now, Hugh. Just thank her now.”

  “She can’t hear me.” Hugh sniffed.

  “Yes, she can. Yes, she can.”

  She moved to Sergeant Greene. “Mary Frederick died, Jared. I don’t know … maybe ten minutes, fifteen … minutes ago.” She was almost whispering, but I could hear her clearly. Could hear the sergeant, too.

  “I’m right sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

  “It’s all right. She had been sick for a long while. She told me the doctor in Washington said she didn’t have long for this world. So she’s no longer suffering.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’d like to impose on you, Jared.”

  “It is not an imposition, ma’am.”

  “Her family plot is on her plantation, five miles down the road. That’s where she would like to be buried. Beside her father, her family.” Mama drew a breath, had to lean against the wall.

  “Are you all right, Miz Anna?”

  Mama let out a part laugh, part sigh. “It’s been a tiring night and morning, Jared.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I have no way to get her body to the plantation.”

  Sergeant Jared Greene understood. Turning, he stepped outside, pulled his hat down, and sang out the order: “Hammond, Peavy, Jackson, Cremony! Up here. Up here, now. Wilson! Go get Lieutenant Bullis. Move it, soldier!”

  * * * * *

  We’d been to funerals before. When someone died in the county, Mama always made us go. Said we had to show our respects. Often I didn’t know the person who was dead, but other times—like when Gregory Hall’s two children, one a couple years older than me and the other just a baby, died of cholera—I did. Still, I had never cared much for funerals, mainly because of how the Reverend White conducted them. He never once spoke about the person’s life, what that person meant to his or her neighbors. Rarely did he ever mention the deceased’s name.

  Miss Mary’s was different, though Mama didn’t make us put on our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. The soldiers, with Mama’s and Lieutenant Bullis’ permission, had wrapped her in the quilt and solemnly carried her to the wagon that was supposed to haul corn. The remaining soldiers stood at attention. It was Lieutenant Bullis who led the wagon, driven by the runaway slave, Hammond. Mama, Edith, Hugh, and I followed, the soldiers marching behind us.

  We didn’t see anyone on the road.

  By the time we reached Miss Mary’s plantation, thunder rolled in the distance and the wind blew cold. We turned down the lane. It was almost like we were in a dream. Nothing seemed real. The place stood empty. The gate on the white picket fence banged open and shut with the gusts of wind that moaned through the smokehouse. Its door lay on the ground. There stood the frame of the new carriage house, and the old building, one unfinished, the other abandoned. The horses were gone. So were the mules.

  “Lieutenant Bullis!” Mama called out.

  We were turning down a narrow road that led past the slave quarters and toward muddy cotton fields.

  The Yankee called for a halt, reined in, turned his horse around, and rode back toward Mama.

  “Yes, Missus Ford?”

  “That is not the way to the Frederick family plot.”

  Saddle leather creaking, Lieutenant Bullis turned and pointed. I could see a fence beyond the fields, near the woods.

  “That appears to be a graveyard over there, ma’am.”

  “Yes.” Mama cleared her throat. At first, she didn’t say a word, just wet her lips. Finally she drew in a breath and pointed. “The family plot is that way.” It was the opposite from where Lieutenant Bullis had been leading us. “Through the woods over there, then up the hill.”

  He looked in that direction, then back at the other graveyard, and finally nodded. “Of course, Missus Ford. My apologies.”

  “You need not apologize, sir.”

  So we turned around, and continued our funeral march.

  “But ain’t that a graveyard?” Baby Hugh whispered.

  “Shhhh,” Edith hushed him. A few rods later, she added, in a softer whisper: “That’s where Miss Mary’s slaves are buried.”

  * * * * *

  Mama was right. Miss Mary had known she was dying. We all understood that when we reached the Frederick cemetery. There, beside her father’s ten-foot high marble monument, was a freshly dug grave. She even had a headstone with hands clasped in prayer etched above:

  Here Lies Our Beloved Daughter

  Mary Josephine Frederick

  1811–1864

  Yet I couldn’t help wonder what Miss Mary would have thought about all this. No fancy coffin, just Mama’s quilt for a shroud. Six colored men serving as her pallbearers, a Union officer with rotten teeth reading the Beatitudes. Instead of a crowd of neighbors, there stood around the grave a bunch of enemy soldiers, and four friends and neighbors who really did cherish her.

  Sergeant Jared Greene went up after the lieutenant closed his Bible. Hat in hand, Greene pointed his mangled hand down the road. “I lived just down the road over yonder.” He smiled. “I’d see Miss Mary Frederick riding toward Camden, or, once in a while, she’d come by Mister Ford’s mill wanting lumber. Now she never looked me in the eye, and I knew better than to look her in the eye, but she always said, ‘good day,’ and I’d tell her, ‘good day, ma’am.’ So she was a fine neighbor, even to a man of color. So ….” He turned to the grave, and to Miss Mary’s wrapped body, and he said: “Good day, Miss Mary Frederick. Good life.”

  Mama spoke next, smiling at some stories she told, but honestly I don’t remember anything she said. Nor what Edith said. I was just remembering all those trips we had made from our farm into Camden and back, all those times in Mr. Mendenhall’s store. She had introduced me to Simms and Dumas and Poe and Dickens and Shakespeare and Milton. She had opened my eyes, my imagination.

  When Mama asked if I wanted to say anything, all I could do was shake my head.

  “That’s all right, Travis,” she said, and Baby Hugh came up.

  “She always brought me food,” he said. “Sweets. I hope she’s eating now in heaven.” Then he ran back and held onto Mama.

  We sang “Gently, Lord, Oh, Gently Lead Us” and “Oh, Sing to Me of Heaven,” before the lieutenant picked up a handful of dirt and said: “‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’” He dropped the dirt into the grave.

  The lieutenant and Jared Greene shook our hands, then we walked away—before they laid Miss Mary’s body in her grave and began to cover it—walked all the way back home.

  I didn’t feel bad, not even sad. Oddly enough, right then, I felt comforted, blessed to have known Miss Mary. Yet later I would come to think of Mary Frederick as the first victim of the Battle of Poison Spring.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When we got home, Mama said she was so addled, she couldn’t think straight. She wandered about the kitchen, looking for something but couldn’t remember what. She said she was nonplused, which sent me to the other cabin to check with Webster’s.

  non´plus-ed, n. Puzzled; put to a stand.

  By the time I got back, she had found a butcher’s knife, and was using it to stir grits in boiling water. Edith glanced at me, but I only shrugged. Baby Hugh looked at both of us and said: “Mama’s addled.”

  “Yes,” Mama said, “I am.”

  That’s when I saw that she was crying. “Can we do anything, Mama?” I asked.

  “No.” She lifted her apron to wipe her tears.

  Thunder boomed, and instantly the rain fell,
pounding the house.

  “Roof’s gonna leak again,” Baby Hugh said.

  “Let it.” A smile brightened Mama’s face, and, using the oven mittens, she pulled the bowl of grits from the fireplace, dropped the butcher knife on the hearth, and walked to us. Her tears had stopped.

  Squeezing between Edith and me, she lifted Baby Hugh onto her lap, kissing his cheek. Hugh hugged her, and Mama reached out, gripping my hand with her left and Edith’s with her right.

  “It rained like this when Papa and I were married,” she said. “In Camden. Fifteen years ago. And I remember the preacher ….”

  “Was it Reverend White?” Baby Hugh asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “No,” Mama said. “His name was … Murchison. Dark red hair and a Scottish voice born to play the pipes. I don’t know whatever became of him. Anyway, it rained hard ….”

  “Was there a big crowd?”

  Mama laughed. “Well, there was your father, me, Willard, the preacher, and my mother, who took a steamboat down to see her favorite daughter be married.”

  “You were her favorite daughter?” Edith asked.

  “As you are mine. I was her only daughter. Anyway, it began pouring, and the preacher, he said … ‘They say when it rains at a funeral, it means that all the angels are crying tears of joy because a new angel has joined them and received his or her wings from the Lord.’ Then the preacher said … ‘That’s for a funeral. But I honestly don’t know what this means.’”

  Mama erupted in laughter, and we joined in, although it took a moment before I understood the joke.

  Sliding Hugh off her lap, she kissed his forehead, then turned to kiss Edith, and lastly me. “I think God has given Mary Frederick her wings, and all the angels in heaven are shedding tears of joy.”

  Back she went to the fireplace to fix our supper. No longer was she nonplused.

  * * * * *

  It took forever to find the fishing poles, and it was Baby Hugh who discovered them up in the corncrib, of all places. I had to replace the line on one pole, and the hooks on all three, before Hugh and I went to the garden to dig up earthworms. Edith refused to help.