by Cathy Gohlke
“Why did they call her the ‘black sheep’?”
“Oh, she ran off with a French-speaking man—rich, and just off the boat. He was an abolitionist to boot—if you can dream there’d be such a thing. Mr. Marcus wouldn’t have anything to do with his sister. Even though Miz Charlotte married the man, her brother never spoke her name again. It was like she was dead to him.
“Miz Charlotte treated me more like a hired servant, never like a slave. She taught me to read and write, to speak proper, though she couldn’t tell nobody about any of that. She never had children of her own. I think she thought of me like her daughter sometimes.” Ruby smiled. “But, oh, how I missed my mama.”
“She never knew where you were.”
Ruby shook her head. “As long as Miz Grace was alive she’d send news about Mama and Jeremiah along to Miz Charlotte, who’d let me read her letters. They couldn’t risk letting Mama know where I was. If word ever got to Masta Marcus, there’d be the devil to pay, and his name was still on my bill of sale. Miz Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to sign her name to it, and Miz Grace didn’t dare.”
“Aunt Grace died, when?”
“About the time Mista Albert’s own wife died—when that baby boy born.”
“Alex.”
Ruby nodded. “Sixteen years ago. Miz Grace was so sick and grieved she followed Miz Rose to her grave. That was the last I heard of Mama or my boy, the last Miz Charlotte heard.”
I thought about that, about all the secrets that pulled down Ruby’s life, over and over. I wondered if even Ruby knew them all. I yanked the dead grass, angry for the many years she’d missed with those she loved most in this life, and how all of that heartache fittingly lay at Grandfather’s door.
Ruby stood and clutched the pine tree, leaned her cheek against it. “I helped your mama run off with your daddy because of the way he looked at her. I’d never seen a man look at a woman like that. He looked at her—not like he owned her, but like he cherished her—treasured her—held her high in his thoughts. I never knew your mama to be so happy, not since before we laid Miz Lydia in the ground.” Ruby shook her head sadly. “I thought, simple as it sounds, that if Miz Caroline could have that kind of love, that kind of happy, maybe someday it would find me too.”
Ruby pulled the turban from her hair and wiped her eyes. “You know, after he take me I never wanted a man. Miz Charlotte offered to let some good colored man court me.” She shook her head. “But I couldn’t bring myself to think there’d be any love in that. There was no love in what Masta Marcus did to Mama. There was no love in what he done to me.” She shuddered, and the tears fell like rain.
I waited, not knowing what to say.
“So all these years later I’m still asking, where is that happy? And I’m still asking… is there never any end to sadness?”
I turned away. It was a question I’d asked, even before the war. It was a heated, dark question that, at least for me and my family, had its roots all tangled and bound up in slavery. My fists clenched. I felt the fever rise inside me. I vowed again to do all I could to rip slavery from our family, from everywhere I could reach, to cast it forever into a pitching, burning fire.
I thought about what Gen. Sherman was doing and the reasons he did it—how it didn’t seem to have much to do with ending slavery but how slavery would end if the North won the war. I thought about Pa and his part—aggressive, but without a gun. I thought about Mr. Heath, and the Henrys, and our years helping the Underground Railroad. I thought about Cousin Albert and how he thought the coloreds needed slavery, how he thought they’d be lost without it. I thought of his men, fighting and deceiving and dying to protect what was theirs, and what they believed was theirs. I thought about President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and how far that had to go to be more than words on paper.
My heart pounded and the heat behind my eyes built. I paced, away from Ruby, fearful that if I stood too close I might explode. I had to do something.
I pictured myself in Federal uniform, blowing holes in shackles and chains, blasting away at auction blocks with the Sharps my grandfather had given me as a boy. Then I conjured an image of Grandfather and Jed Slocum.
It was all I could do not to grab my shovel, leave Ruby standing there, and walk to Grandfather’s grave, dig it up, rip the casket apart, and spit openly on his bones.
But what I did was walk up behind Ruby, behind my blood aunt, and wrap my arms around her while she cried.
Thirty-Seven
The warning bell from Mitchell House rang wildly, not stopping, not pausing for breath. Ruby and I started, tripped over our shovels, and ran the mile against the growing, biting wind, back through the fields, to find Mamee jumping, blindly yanking on the rope.
I grabbed it from her, sat her down even as she fought me, saw the fear and tears spring from her eyes, saw the children huddled, fearful, on the front steps. “What is it? What is it, Mamee?” But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t stop crying. “Mamee! What’s wrong? Where is everybody?”
“She shot him!” Mamee sputtered. “She shot my Noah!”
“What? Who?” Ruby ran her hands up and down Mamee’s arms, trying to calm her. “Where is he? Where’s Noah?”
Mamee pointed to the house, weeping. Ruby stood to run inside, but I grabbed her arm and held her back. “Who shot Noah, Mamee? Where?”
Mamee nodded, weeping. “Noah—in the study. She shot him—run off crazy with the gun.”
A sick sense grew in my stomach. I was halfway up the steps when Mamee cried, “Miz Caroline! Miz Caroline got a gun-she crazy! She shot him! She shot him!”
Cousin Albert’s study door stood open. Noah lay sprawled, his leg twisted beneath him, blood seeping across the carpet. Emily had already ripped her petticoat, tied a tourniquet around Noah’s upper arm. When I fell into the room Emily’s eyes sprang wild.
“Robert—”she began.
“Should I go for a doctor?”
Emily shook her head. “There’s no time. I can dig the ball out. Mamee can help me if you get her calmed down. Help me lift him to the desk.”
It took the two of us plus Ruby and Mamee to half drag his six-foot frame across the floor, to lift him. He’d lost a good amount of blood, and maybe that’s what made him pass out—that and the pain from his splintered leg and arm. Ma’d shot him twice. I couldn’t figure why or where she’d found a gun.
Mamee ran to boil water, and Emily bade Ruby stand by Noah while she ran for a knife, something to dig the bullets out, bandages, whatever she needed. She pulled me to the hallway behind her.
“You’ve got to find your mother. You’ve got to get that gun away from her!”
“What happened? Why did she shoot Noah?”
“She heard Noah telling me that Ashland burned to the ground.” I steadied myself on the doorpost. “We didn’t know she was there. She must have been listening at the door.” I trailed Emily to the kitchen while she searched for supplies.
“Ashland? Gone?” I couldn’t take that in. “We were just there.”
“What?”
“No—I mean we were in the slave cemetery—not near the Big House.”
Emily shook her head. “Nobody knows who started it-bummers or deserters—Noah said they’ve been all over the countryside the last month. It could even have been lightning from a storm. Cousin Caroline walked in just as Noah was saying there’s a rumor that Ashland’s slaves set the fire—but that couldn’t be. Ashland’s slaves are long gone. But that’s all she took in, and she suddenly believed Noah was responsible! She demanded to know what he’d done with her father.
“Before I could stop him he reminded her that Uncle Marcus was dead and buried in the family plot.” Emily pushed her hair back from her eyes and looked up into mine. “She tore from the room and came back with Papa’s revolver—the one he kept locked in a secret drawer of his desk.”
“How’d she—”
But that’s when we saw six small heads crowding the doorway. Emily
took charge again. “Henry I want you to take the children upstairs and stay there till I come—no matter how long it is.”
“But—”he began.
“You heard Miss Emily Henry. I’m counting on you.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze, and he squared up, then herded the others up the stairs.
Emily rummaged through the cupboard. “Before Papa left he taught us both how to shoot and showed us where he’d hidden the revolver, just in case we’d have trouble with slaves or Yankees. I never dreamed she’d remember that!” Emily pushed scissors, twine, a needle, a knife, and a whetting stone into my hands. “Carry these to the study. I’ll see if Mamee’s got water and bandages ready.”
Noah moaned, semiconscious. His black face had grown darker in pain. Ruby sponged his forehead, crooning softly to him.
“I heard some of what Miss Emily said,” Ruby whispered to me. “You know she’s gone to Ashland, to see for herself, to find Masta Marcus.”
“I’ll go after her.”
“Be careful,” Ruby warned. “She might not know you now, and she’s got that gun.”
“She crazy! She’ll kill you!” Mamee warned as she and Emily set the kettle of steaming water on the floor by Ruby.
“Ma won’t hurt me. She knows me. She remembered me.”
Ruby held my eyes. “That was yesterday. This is today.”
Emily pulled back Noah’s shirt, swabbed the bloody wound.
“Do you want me here?” I asked. “Do you need me?”
“No.” Emily shook her head, slapping the knife across the whetting stone. “Go after Cousin Caroline. Get that gun away from her.” She looked up, frightened. “But be careful, Robert. Oh, please be careful.” I pulled her forehead to mine, held her face between my palms for only a moment, then took off at a run.
Thirty-Eight
I kept to the road this time, thinking that’s what Ma would have done, sweeping my eyes over the wind-raked fields, searching for signs that she’d passed.
I’d check the family plot first. Maybe if Ma’d seen Grandfather’s stone, the carved words, the date of his death, maybe reality would take hold of her. But if it did, what else would she remember? The night Grandfather died? Jed Slocum?
“Father,” I prayed out loud, “help me find Ma before—” I couldn’t finish. “Guide Emily’s hands. Be with Noah. Please don’t let Noah die, Lord. He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve this. Mamee needs him. We all need him.”
Fierce blasts tunneled the drive. I ducked my head, shielded my eyes, and elbowed my way through the flying grit and leaves. I dodged frenzied maples. Their limbs writhed like supple, black snakes fighting the sky, and grabbed at me from both sides.
The brewing storm rumbled and drummed, troops on the march. I had to find Ma before it broke, had to keep my mind set on that. She’d run from the house—likely without her cloak. I could feel the temperature dropping.
“Ma! Ma!” I screamed, desperate for her to hear me, fearful she might hear me, praying she’d dropped her revolver.
At last the maples gave way to long-needle pines. I stumbled from the wind tunnel onto the circular drive.
I stared into the stark, fire-blackened heap that was Ashland. Death—bigger, wider than I’d seen—stared back.
The white stucco was gone. Gray stumps replaced the tall, white columns that once stood sentinel across the front verandah. Stone chimneys—black monuments—framed the ruin. The roof—broken, bent, caved—created a giant lean-to against the sky. The solid oak front door was burned but stood open—open against open space. The grand staircase climbed into air, landing nowhere.
I swallowed, needed to scream, to laugh, to spit. But all I could think was, fitting end. And that shamed me, for the pain this would give Ma.
I circled the house, pushed against the blasting wind, searching. Parts of the first floor remained. Parts gave way to open cellar. “Ma? Ma!” I called, fearful she might have tried to walk into the house, might have fallen through to the cellar. I thought to climb down while it was yet daylight, to search through the burned and broken beams.
But it was as if God Himself pulled a dark veil across the day. A shaft of lightning split the sky, shattering one of the tallest pines in a burst of fire. Thunder boomed. Freezing rain, partnered with sleet, shot from the sky in a million tiny knives to pierce my face, my ears, my hands. “Ma! Ma!” I screamed. But even I couldn’t hear me in the rushing wind and fire.
That’s when the old dream, a dream from my childhood, flashed through my mind: I’d dreamed that William Henry and I and a sea of black bodies with no names and no faces hoed behind the Heaths’ house in the heat of the day. A tiny speck of a funnel blew up from the south. The wind rose until it grew into a great black funnel that pulled the green corn from the ground, split the barn, and uprooted the entire Laurelea. The funnel swallowed William Henry and the black bodies with no names and no faces, pulling them upside down and backward through the sky. William Henry’s skin split a seam down the middle, all in one piece, and came flying in my face. When I looked down I was wearing William Henry’s sleek black skin, and it felt good and cool and right. But when I looked up, there stood Ma, six feet above me, weeping as the world’s end came on. I reached up to comfort her, calling, “Ma! Ma!” But she narrowed her eyes in hate and glared on me with shame. She shoved me away, swearing by God Almighty, then whistled a shrill blast on two fingers and set the hounds on me. She turned and ran South, away from the storm and Laurelea and me.
I’d not dreamed that in years, not since I was thirteen. It had its end in William Henry’s death—there could be no more to the nightmare. But it welled a fear inside me, a monstrous thing I couldn’t quell, and I screamed over and over, “Ma! Ma! Ma!”
I couldn’t breathe against the driving sleet, could not see into the cellar. Pelting rain slammed my face, my chest. But I couldn’t leave. What if Ma was out there? What if she was picking her way through a part of the ruined house I couldn’t see? She’d never stand up to a storm like that.
I searched and searched, called and called. No answer. I couldn’t see, tripped on a beam, fell headlong down steps. I ripped my jacket on some long hook, clean through my shirt, right through my skin. I didn’t have to see it to know the gash ran near my bone. I tasted blood from somewhere above my lip, but it seemed nothing compared to the pain shooting through my arm. I stumbled toward the barn, hoping, praying it stood, hoping, praying that Ma’d taken shelter in a corner—calm, without her gun.
The barn stood—the same barn Stargazer and I had found shelter in Christmas morning. But Ma was not there. Only rats scurried from empty stall to empty stall, corner cowards.
I slumped against the wall behind the door, shivering, shaking all over with cold, grateful to be hidden from the storm. My arm wouldn’t bend right, wouldn’t stop bleeding. The tiny piercing knives gradually left off their hunt beneath my skin. I no longer felt the gash in my arm—only numbness, and gradually a spreading warmth, seeping in my feet, up my legs, across my weighted arms and chest. Sleep sang inside my head, calling me down.
From somewhere far away I heard Granny Struther’s warning screech, “Don’t you never give way to sleep when you be freezing cold—it be the death of you! Get out of those clothes, boy! Out of those wet clothes!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, not sure if I was dreaming, or if Granny wagged her finger before my face. But in my dream, or in my motions, I pulled myself up, slung my arms tight around me and out again, forced my feet to jump up and down, punching myself to stay awake, even as the barn swayed. I jumped and jumped, tearing at my wet and bloodied clothes, until the swinging, swaying barn overtook me. Then nothing.
The old dream came in earnest. Only this time it was Ashland, not Laurelea. And the crops hoed were not green corn, but tobacco. There were no black bodies, nameless and faceless, working the fields as before—only a hundred hoes in midair pummeling the crops, beating, tearing at their roots before the tiny black funnel ever specked the horizon.
But at last it blew down—from the north this time—a blue-black speck in a corner of the sky. It grew and grew till it ripped up everything—the barn, the house, the chickens, the tobacco plants—the ones with roots and the ones without—sending long, green, curled leaves with sticky spines spinning through the air upside down and backward.
William Henry was not there, fighting the wind funnel, as he’d been so many times before. Jeremiah was not there. But there stood Wooster, strong on his one leg. The storm ripped all around him, fierce, and dragging, pulling everything with it, near and far—all of Ashland—everything but him.
Just as I asked how he could hold against the storm, Ma appeared, standing six feet above me. I knew she’d whistle for the hounds, and I couldn’t bear it. I lifted my arms, torn and bleeding, over my face, hoping to save my eyes. I waited and waited. But the whistle never came—only her shouts, on and on, from a long way off.
At last I dropped my arms, cracked my eyes against the light. There stood Ma, hate and shame claiming the corner creases of her eyes. I crunched my eyes, hoping the image would fade. But when I opened them, Ma stood with a Colt 44 leveled at my head. “Be a dream,” I prayed, “be my fevered dream.”
“Get up, you filthy Yankee pig,” she ordered. “Get up before I shoot you dead.”
“Ma.” I tried to speak. My throat tightened, swollen, parched. I can’t say if the word came from my mouth.
“Get up, or I’ll shoot you here!” she screamed.
I tried to stand, stumbled, and caught myself against the wall.
“Ma,” I tried again.
“What did you call me?” she shrieked.
“Ma.” I heard the word.
“Don’t call me that. How dare you call me that!” She swung the gun in my face. “What have you done with Papa?”
“It’s me, Ma—Robert,” I pleaded, but no words came out.