by Anna Myers
I do not struggle with him. Instead I turn to meet his gaze. “Joey is a nickname used by friends,” I say coldly. “Please call me Joseph.”
Chapter Seven
Dear Father,
I am changed. Yes, I am still afraid, hut I am more angry. I have stood beside the gallows and watched our men die.
The slaves are all gone except Cato and Biddy. Cato says they are probably hiding in the woods. When I said to Biddy that I appreciate how she did the right thing and did not run away, she laughed. Then she said, “Master Joey, yo’sure don’t understand very much, not very much a’ tall.”
It is now my habit to rise early. Leaving Mother and the others still sleeping, I slip from our room and head for the upstairs veranda. From there I can see the town. I look each day for some change, something that might give me hope. I notice too the natural things that have always been part of my world but that are more dear to me now that I am a prisoner.
The July sun is already hot. The early morning fog has been burned away except along the Wateree River. There is a cornfield, tall and green. “Carolina corn,” I say, “growing near the river.” I find strength in the corn and the river with its fog.
I do not keep my eyes turned toward the river. Instead I look back toward the town. What I see makes me shiver despite the sun. Five men are being carried up the hill on litters. I know even before I recognize the big scarred guard that the soldiers are victims of smallpox.
The horrible disease is coming toward us. As if I could protect my family, I run back inside. My mother is up now, and she too is watching the procession. I go to stand beside her at the window.
“The little quarters in the back,” I whisper. “That must be where they’re headed.”
“But why? They have not carried other injured men here.” Mother turns then and studies my face. “You know, don’t you, Joey?”
There is no use trying to hide the truth. “Smallpox,” I say.
My mother gasps, but then we are quiet, watching. When she speaks she is calm. “The poor creatures.” She slips her arm through mine. “You must not go near them. Not under any circumstances.”
I nod my agreement, but I have spotted the old soldier who wanted so much to know about his son. His arm hangs over the side of the litter as he is passed under my window. He’s still alive, I think, and still wondering about his boy. I will find it difficult to keep my word to my mother.
Later in the day, I do receive one bit of good news. Euven is indeed coming for lessons. I go to the keeping room, and while I wait for him at the round table I write a letter. The great doors are closed with a British guard posted in front of them outside. Euven will pass through the front door and come down the stairs.
I keep my eyes in that direction and leap to my feet when I see his boots. Then his head comes into sight. It is bent because the doorway at the bottom of the stairs is not high.
“Euven,” I say, “will you help me?” I grab the letter I have written and hold it out to him.
“What’s this?”
“A letter. It’s to Mistress Jenkins out by Sander’s Creek about her son, James.”
Euven’s face grows somber as he reads my words about how James thought of his mother just before he died and asked me to see that she knew of his fate. I wrote too of how he stood tall on the gallows and of how I stayed to watch until it was over.
“You expressed yourself well,” he says, “and your hand has improved.” He gives the letter back to me.
I scowl, impatient, that Euven wishes to discuss penmanship, evaluating my letter as a teacher when I have asked for his help. Perhaps he does not understand. “But how can I have the message delivered?”
“Why not ask Captain Harkins?”
Obviously Euven has taken leave of his senses. “Harkins? You suppose a redcoat will aid me?”
He shrugs and takes his seat, ready for the lesson. “Only a redcoat can pass through the lines. Besides, they are not all monsters.”
I pound my fist against the table. “Have you not seen the gallows? Do you not know any of the men who have been hanged in my mother’s side garden?”
“One, Matthew Murphy, was my boyhood friend who turned from our Quaker ways.”
I see grief in his eyes and think I am about to make my point. “Have we not read, ‘It is the dead who make the longest demands’?”
Slowly he nods his head. “Thee are right. Matthew’s death demands me to stand for peace.”
I am too furious to speak and without looking at Euven, I drop to my chair, where I slump and lean against the table.
“There are other soldiers out there who need letters written. Perhaps the captain could arrange for thee to write them.” He smiles. “Doubtless he would be more quick to agree were thee also to serve those British soldiers who cannot read or write.”
I let out an angry snort. “Never. I’ll never be a friend to a redcoat.”
Euven opens the geometry book and begins our lesson. A small smile moves across his lips, and I think that he is amused to have used the hated geometry to end our discussion.
When lessons are over and Euven has gone, I do not leave the keeping room. Instead I linger at the table, studying the woodbox. The British cook accepts my filling of it each day, probably thinking I have been assigned the task. I long to move the logs, to hold the gun in my hands for just a moment.
No one is in the keeping room except me. I rise and walk to the box. Surely it would not hurt just to touch the pistol, to reassure myself that it is real and that one day I will use my father’s pistol to strike back.
But someone is coming down the stairs. It is Captain Harkins who appears. He looks at me and smiles his greeting as if I had never made the comment about the use of my name.
I feel anger growing inside me. Does he think me only a child whose rage can be forgotten the next day? I force down such thoughts. There is no way to have this letter delivered except through Captain Harkins.
I take the letter from the table and hold it out to him. “I wrote this for a soldier who was hanged yesterday. Is there hope that it could be delivered?”
“You are asking a favor of me, a man whom you despise?” He does not sound hateful.
I tell myself that if I am nice to him, I may get my way, but I can only come out with, “I ask for the dead soldier and his mother who is all alone.”
He smiles. “I have a mother. It shall be delivered.” Captain Hawkins moves past me toward the big doors at the front.
“There is more.” He glances back and I blurt out my request. “I seek permission to write letters for other soldiers and to have them delivered or posted.”
He raises his eyebrows and begins to tap the front of his boot against the brick floor. “That is a request I cannot promise will be granted.”
I swallow hard. “I am willing to write for your men as well.”
“Well,” he says, “in such a case, we might just be able to reach an agreement. I will speak of the request to my superior.”
“Thank you.” I turn toward the stairs then and dash up them as quickly as possible.
And so I become a scribe. Captain Harkins has arranged it for me. The first letter was for the dying David Wilson. Mindful of my mother’s request, I sat just outside the open door, where I strained to catch his words and wrote the message to his wife and daughters at home.
“My sons all be soldiers,” he told me. “Oldest four marched off after we come in from the field one day to find thieving redcoats had took our cow and calf, pigs too, and bags of grain. Rob, he was the youngest.” His weak voice broke into a sob, but he collected himself and went on. “We begged him out of going with his brothers, but we couldn’t hold him long, him determined like he was to run the British out of Carolina. When his time come, I up and went by his side.” He rested for a moment, then went on. “I pray the others yet live. You watch for the Wilson boys, will you, lad? You watch for my sons.”
When I came next to the outbuilding, Dav
id Wilson was no more. The others died quickly too, as I am sure the British planned they should. Now the building stands empty, a reminder of the horrors of smallpox. Even though I never entered the quarters I scrubbed myself in an outside tub after each time of going close. There would be, for me, no desire to live if somehow I carried smallpox upstairs to my mother or to the little ones who throw their arms about my legs and squeal greetings when I enter.
Mary has joined my letter-writing efforts. I thought it too dangerous for a girl child, but Mary pleaded. Mother surprised me by giving her consent. “This war has changed us all, Joey,” she said, and she put down her needlework to draw both Mary and me to her. “You two, I know, can never be children again.”
At first Mary disliked writing for the redcoats as much as I do, but of late I have seen her smile at some of the British. Today I brought my bag of completed letters into the keeping room to leave for Captain Harkins to post. Mary is reading a letter to a British soldier, who sits at the table. He is the military cook whom Biddy now assists.
I hear him groan and turning, I see that he has leaned his head on the big table. Mary is up and she pats him gently on the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says gently. “Just so awfully sorry, Sergeant Glen.”
For one frightening moment, I think she is going to embrace the redcoat. I drop my letters on the shelf. “Mary,” I say sternly, “Mother wishes to see you upstairs at once.”
I stomp up the stairs, but it is a few minutes before my sister follows me, and I know she has lingered with the sergeant. When I open the door to our room, I hear my mother laugh. It is a sound I had not expected to hear, and I am shocked.
Biddy and Mother sit at the tiny table in the corner. They drink tea, and I catch a phrase or two of the story Biddy is telling about a redcoat chasing a chicken in an effort to kill it. Mother and Biddy are both enjoying the tale.
I pause just inside and get right to my business. “Mother, something must be done with Mary. I have just seen her try to comfort a redcoat.” I turn to close the door, but my sister is there, panting.
“The poor man’s son has been killed, fighting in New York.” She reaches back to slam the door with her foot. “Mother, you did not ask me to come up here as Joey claimed, did you?” Mary moves toward Mother and almost tumbles over Sarah and George, who are on the floor building with blocks.
“You should forbid her to talk to them if she is going to become friendly with the filthy …” I am about to use a word Mother would not like. I swallow. “I think Mary is too young to be among the enemy.”
Mother flashes a frown at me. “Hush, Joey,” she says. Then she turns to Mary. “What is the problem here?”
“I read Sergeant Glen a letter from his wife, sending him word of his son’s death.”
“Joey, surely you cannot object to your sister showing compassion,” Mother says.
“They are the enemy,” I shout. “I pray they will all die.”
“Oh, Joey, no.” Mother’s voice is more sad than angry.
“Poor man,” adds Biddy. “He be often talking of that boy.”
They have joined together against me. I shrug my shoulders. “Waste your sympathy if you choose, but I’ll save mine for my countrymen who are hanged beneath our window.”
“Redbirds, blackbirds, all birds loves their baby birds just the same,” says Biddy.
I am tempted to comment that if my father were here she would not be sitting drinking tea with the mistress, but I am not foolish enough to push Mother too far.
When Biddy leaves, I decide to try Mother again. She is still at the table and I join her. She smiles at me. “Biddy has promised shepherd’s pie for supper. She’s got a pan baking just for us.”
Shepherd’s pie is a favorite of mine. Mother thinks the promise of something more than cheese for our evening meal will distract me. It does not. “I am glad Biddy eases your distress,” I say.
“She knows how to laugh even now,” says Mother.
“Of course, she does not suffer as we do. A slave is a slave, war or not.”
Mother reaches out to put her hand over mine. “Biddy knows suffering, Joey. Your father bought her for me because she was being sold away from her husband over near Waxhaw. I saw her on the auction block and felt sorry for her, wanted to keep her near. She had a babe in her arms, a little girl just the age of my James.”
“What became of the child?”
“Died one night in her sleep.” Mother’s eyes close for a moment. “It was summer, and I woke to Biddy’s screams coming from the quarter. I went to her. Our friendship began so.”
“She is lucky to have found so kind a mistress,” I say.
Mother shakes her head. “No, Joey, I can’t say a human being who is bought and sold is lucky. Do you know what I heard another woman slave tell Biddy about the baby?”
She does not wait for my response, but her voice grows low. “‘Well, that be one sweet brown baby won’t ever have her heart ripped out when they sells her from her Mammy’s arms.’ Sixteen years ago that was, but I can hear those words still, every syllable and tone just as they were spoken.” Mother gets up to walk about, but she has more to say. “I am pondering a return to my Quaker beliefs. When this war is over, I may see that all slaves in this house are freed.”
I do not say so, but I am thinking that my father will have no part of such a foolish idea. Nor would he want any member of his family to befriend a redcoat. I look at Mary, who is now on the floor with George and Sarah. She feels my gaze and glances up.
Her expression is still angry. “Not all redcoats are cruel men, Joey. I want them to lose the war and give back our house. I want Father to come home, but they are not all bad men.”
“Captain Harkins has a child, a baby boy whom he has never seen,” says Mother from across the room.
My anger explodes. “He should go home then. We most certainly do not need him here.” Jumping up, I accidentally knock over my chair, but I do not pick it up. I dash for the door and go out onto the veranda. “Come home, Father,” I shout into the blue sky. “Come home and set them straight.”
Chapter Eight
Dear Father,
Cornwallis has ridden away on his great white horse with drums and bugles sounding. He is off to fight the ragged troops that try to rid South Carolina of the mighty English army.
His replacement here, Lord Rawdon, proves to be even more cruel. Our family was rounded up, told to take only what we could carry with us. It was the horrible Keegan who came for us. When George stumbled with his basket, Keegan prodded him with a musket, and he took pleasure in our dismay at being moved into the tiny quarters where men had recently died with smallpox. Mother, of course, protested.
At once Captain Keegan was beside her. “My lady does not take to the prescribed new home?” He gave her a mocking bow. “It was suggested to Lord Rawdon that you might react just so. Shall I repeat to you how His Lordship replied?” His hideous laugh interrupted his words, and he slapped at his leg with mirth. “‘Tell Mistress Kershaw,’ says he, ‘that the gallows stand ready if she prefers them for her brats.”
For a long moment, Mother said nothing. Instead she stared directly into the face of Captain Keegan. “I wonder, sir, what manner of man you are,” she said at last, “and if ever a mother has loved you.” Then she reached for the valise she had set down, and she marched on toward the door of that death cabin.
I am about to make one good strike back.
We sit on the steps of the smallpox cabin. One soldier is left outside the tiny building to guard us. At least Captain Keegan does not stay. My mother insists that we sit here while she looks about inside. We have barely settled when Cato appears with hot water, soap, and rags.
My mother comes to the door. She is surprised. “They allowed you to come?” she asks Cato.
“I did not ask their permission, mistress.” His dark eyes dance with defiance.
Mother and Cato scrubbed the floors and walls of our new quarters. “I wil
l never use those mattresses,” Mother says, but she will not allow me to help with the carrying. Instead when Cato hoists one end, my mother manages the other as well as could any man.
“Reckon Mr. Lord Rawdon wanting these for his bed?” says Cato, and we all laugh.
It is now night. We are settled upon the floor. “Not possible to put hands on the household bedclothes,” Cato apologized, but he produced blankets for us, which he managed somehow to secure from the very supplies of the British.
Finally we are resting. Moonlight plays about the door, but it does not light the corners of our new prison, where I imagine smallpox has become a great, hairy creature ready to creep across the rough boards toward my sleeping family.
When I am sure that Mother is asleep, I rise, get the one lighted candle the British left on a shelf near the back wall, and place it so that I can see the sleeping little ones. We have no netting, and two fat mosquitoes hover over little Sarah’s face. Asleep she looks even younger than her five years. Gently, I brush back the golden hair from her round cheek. Suddenly, I fear that I might burst with the almost unbearable need to protect her, and I know that what I am about to do is right, no matter the consequence to me. I take the candle and move toward the door, hoping a British sentry does not see the moving light and come rushing in to see what I am up to. To my relief there is no sudden intrusion.
At the doorway, I lean for a moment against the frame, gathering my courage. Not wanting to stare at the stockade, I turn my eyes up to the moon. It is full, a bright ball so close that I think I could toss a pebble smack into its middle.
I know, of course, that there is but one moon. Do the rays, then, which bathe us in silver, belong to Carolina or to the British who now possess our land?
Euven, no doubt, would say it is because there is but one moon, one earth, one God, that we men must learn to live in peace. “Euven’s little brother and sisters are not being exposed to smallpox,” I whisper to the moon. The moon does not reply.