He stopped walking again, turning to put his hands on Kitty’s shoulders as he gazed down into her eyes. “I guess what I want now is to one day see you do to this land what I couldn’t.”
His hands dropped away, his shoulders slumping as he began shuffling along. “An old man’s dream, I guess. War will come, and the land will be lost along with every Southerner’s dream. But I don’t guess I’ll ever stop dreaming. A man shouldn’t ever part with his dreams or illusions, ‘cause when they’re gone, well…he might still exist but he will have ceased to live.”
“I’ll share your dream, Poppa.” She blinked back the tears. “Together, we can make it come true.”
“Another thing, Kitty,” he said thoughtfully. “Don’t be mad with your mother. She’s not the girl I married. Just pity her, as I do, and try to love her in spite of the way she is. I know it’s hard, but I guess it’s what God wants us to do, ‘cause when He gets tired of the way she acts, He’ll just deal with her directly. It’s not up to me to beat her in the ground the way I’d like to sometimes…”
She laughed, because his eyes were twinkling and he was no longer angry. The tension had passed.
Reaching the barn, John paused. “I’m going to take you into town tomorrow and buy you the prettiest hoop dress we can find. I’ve got some money put back from selling honey, and I want you to walk into Aaron Collins’s house looking so pretty that every man there will turn his head to look at you!”
Laughing, he reached out to tug one of her long braids. “That is, you’ll be pretty if I can get you to stop braiding your hair like an Indian and fix yourself up a bit.” Then, his voice gruff with emotion, he added, “I just want the best for you, girl.”
Tears stinging her eyes, she threw herself against his chest, burrowing her face in his old woolen jacket, overcome with the deep love she felt for her father. How could her mother treat him the way she did? He was a wonderful man. Maybe he wasn’t rich and never would be, but he was good and kind and loving. “You’re the most wonderful man I know,” she murmured.
Pleased, he patted her gently, then moved to open the door to the barn and reach for the lantern hanging just to the left inside. When it was lit, they moved on inside the sourish-smelling barn.
“You did a fine job, Kitty,” John said as they stood together looking at Betsy peacefully munching hay as her newborn calf nuzzled beneath her.
Once again, Kitty was blinking away the tears that stung her eyes. It had been a wonderful day, even if it had ended with her mother and father fighting again. Her father was proud of her, and Nathan Collins had kissed her and declared he wanted to come courting. Despite the war clouds that hung heavy over their world that November day in 1860, Kitty Wright was happy.
Chapter Three
The wind was cold, whipping about with the force of a giant, invisible sword, cutting, slashing. Along the roadside the blackberry brambles and plum bushes concealed the water-filled gulches that bordered flat, swampy lowlands spreading into the winter-dead forest beyond.
The wagon carrying John Wright and his daughter, Kitty, toward Goldsboro, moved through the flat countryside to a slightly higher region, past Waylon Sutton’s cotton field. The pickers had not left much. The broken, decaying stalks held little evidence of the white cotton balls that had once dazzled the field like tiny fists of puffy clouds sprinkled among a sea of green.
There were few houses along the way. The finer homes, even the small clapboard houses like the one they lived in, were all set back from the main road, nestled at the edge of woodlands. Only the terribly dilapidated were located closer, those occupied mostly by slave families.
Just before reaching the bridge that would take them across the Neuse River, there was a deep, swampy area, with rotting trees upon the ground, and thick underwood. Just a little farther an old cabin came into view. It was constructed of logs, one or two of them rotting and falling out of rank on the front side, which gave the whole structure a dangerous lean to one corner. The yard was littered with trash and weeds and decaying stumps, and hogs rooted about in the dirt.
As the wagon moved closer, a young boy in his early teens came running from around the back of the house, waving. His hair was a fiery shade of red and hung shaggily about his bright, freckled face. He wore no shirt beneath his faded, patched overalls, and his feet were bare despite the coldness of the day.
“Miss Kitty!” he called excitedly, running toward them, his face spread in a wide grin. “Please wait up…”
“I hope we don’t run into his pappy,” John mumbled as he pulled up on the reins of the old mule.
Kitty ignored his remark as she called, “Andy Shaw, how good to see you. You surely do look better than the last time I saw you.” Her eyes went to his bare feet reproachfully. “But you’re going to be back in bed, if you don’t stop running around in this weather with no shoes on!”
“Ain’t got none,” he said simply, obviously not making excuses for his family being so poor that there was no money for such luxuries. Nodding politely to John, he turned to Kitty once again and said, “I’ve been meanin’ to get down and see you and say thanks for making me well, but since I been back on my feet, Pa’s kept me busy choppin’ wood for winter.”
“I’d say you’ve had a good rest, Andy. That spell of yours had you laid up for almost a week, before your momma ever came and got me. And I’ll just bet you were a few more days getting over it once you started taking that tonic I fixed up for you.”
He dug into the dirt road with his bare toe, hands jammed down into his pockets as he grinned slowly. “I reckon I was at that, but I sure felt poorly till you came along…”
The front door to the house squeaked open, and a thin woman stepped out on the porch and waved, her coarse muslin dress whipping about her in the wind. The curious faces of smaller children appeared at the glassless windows to peer out.
“God bless you, Kitty,” Ruth Shaw called. “I sure appreciate what you did for my boy.”
“Glad I could help you,” Kitty called back. Then she spotted Orville Shaw emerging from the woods. Nudging John, she whispered, “There’s Orville Shaw. Let’s leave.”
John popped the reins over the mule’s rump to start him lumbering along as they waved goodbye to Andy and his mother. John had no intention of getting involved in a conversation with Orville Shaw, who sought constantly to draw him into a heated discussion about slavery and war. And Orville could get downright mean when he wanted to.
Orville quickened his step, cutting across the field to walk straight down the middle of the road toward them. “You hold up there, John Wright,” he yelled, waving his arms above his head. “I aim to have some words with you!”
With him walking directly toward them, there was nothing to do but stop. As Orville came closer, it was obvious that he was already mad, his brows knit, lips pursed angrily.
“You come by here to charge me for what your girl did to my boy?” he roared. “I never asked her to come, and she ain’t no doctor no how. She ain’t got no business mixin’ up them potions of hers and peddlin’ ‘em. You’re just wastin’ your time if you think I’m gonna pay her anything!”
John whispered to Kitty, “You didn’t say anything to me about treating that Shaw boy. What in thunderation did you give him?”
“His mother came to get me,” she answered quickly, also whispering as Orville came closer. “She knew I wouldn’t charge her anything, and they didn’t have money to pay Doc Musgrave. Andy had chills and fever, so I made a tonic from some wild cherry bark and a dogwood tree, like Doc taught me.”
He let out his breath in an exasperated sigh. “If your momma finds out you’ve been traipsin’ after Doc again, Kitty, she’s going to have another one of her fits. I don’t mind. You know that. But your momma says it isn’t proper for a young lady to be trying to do a man’s work—like doctoring.”
“It’s proper if it’s what I want to do,” she fired back at him, suddenly rebellious. She loved medicine. She loved
treating and caring for sick people. It didn’t matter that it was considered unladylike. She would like nothing better than to be a doctor—a dream she shared only with Doc Musgrave, who seemed to understand.
Orville reached the wagon, face tight with anger. “Don’t think you’re gonna get any money out of me, John Wright. That girl of yours ain’t no doctor, and she had no business comin’ here. I didn’t even know she was comin’ till the old lady told me she’d done been and gone. I don’t owe you nothin’—now git!”
“I don’t expect money from you, Mister Shaw,” Kitty defended herself. “I only came to help Andy, because he was sick.”
“You ain’t no doctor,” he shook his fist at her, “and I don’t owe you a damn thing!”
“Just hold it, Shaw.” John stood up and glared down from the wagon. “Don’t you talk to my daughter like that, or I’ll take the whip to you, for sure.”
Orville spat tobacco juice in the direction of the wagon, and it hit the side with a splat, dribbling downward as he wiped at his brown-stained mouth with the back of his hand. His voice came out threatening, “I don’t want no damn nigger-lover comin’ on my property, you hear? Not even passin’ through. You ain’t one of us, John Wright, and I don’t want you or any of your kin comin’ around here. Now git!”
Kitty saw her father’s hands tightening on the whip, knuckles turning white. “Poppa, let’s go.” She touched his arm. “Don’t fight with him, please.”
John sat and snapped the reins, and the mule pulled the wagon forward. Behind them, Orville shouted curses upon them.
They rode along for a while without speaking, but then Kitty broke the silence. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“People being mad because of the way you feel about things.”
“Silence gives consent. I don’t want anyone to think I’m in favor of slavery or the war, so when they ask me, I tell them how I feel.”
“Do you really think there will be a war?”
He nodded, feeling sad as he admitted, “If Lincoln was elected president yesterday, Kitty, I’m afraid that war is not far off. That’s another reason I wanted to come to Goldsboro today—to hear the news.”
“And you think the South will go to war because Lincoln wants to free the slaves?” She was not really sure just why there was even talk of war, except that it had something to do with the slavery issue.
“It isn’t all a matter of slavery,” he answered. “The North and South are just different from each other, and I guess both sides want different things from the government. Slavery just happens to be the one issue on which both sides hotly disagree, and there doesn’t seem to be any chance now for any kind of a compromise.
“If you’re going to be in the company of Weldon Edwards,” he continued, “you need to know a little something about what’s got everyone so fired up these days. Both sides just keep getting hotter and hotter and madder and madder. The Fugitive Slave Act has the South all fired up, because runaway slaves can get help from the North now, and the South can’t do anything about it. Then there’s that book that Stowe woman wrote…Uncle Tom’s House…”
“Cabin,” Kitty corrected him. She had read the book, and it had angered her, too, because she felt it unfair to judge the whole South by a single book.
“It brought a whole wave of folks hating slavery, and it made a lot of the people around here mad. They said the book caused more trouble.” He shook his head slowly. “Yes, it looks as though we are going to have a war, and it will mean death and suffering on both sides, and I wish to God everyone would realize that and find a peaceable way to settle things.”
She sighed. “I guess our neighbors are afraid you wouldn’t fight with them because you don’t sympathize with them.”
She thought about Nathan. What would happen if war did come? He would surely fight, and what would become of this new feeling that was developing between them? Surely, he felt it, too. She wondered if he worried about going off to war and leaving her behind now when things were so wonderful. Maybe it was just men-talk, and the war wouldn’t really come…
Suddenly she realized John was staring straight ahead and had not spoken a word since her last comment about him fighting. “Poppa, you would fight with the South, wouldn’t you? I mean, we have our home, our land…so much to defend. You wouldn’t fight for the North…” That was too incredible an idea to fully comprehend.
Never altering his gaze, he moved to pat her hands, which were folded in her lap. “I’m for staying out of war, girl. If it comes, who’s to say what I’ll do? When that time comes, I’ll just search my heart and find the answer there.”
War! Why did there have to be talk of war? For the past year, her world had revolved around slipping away from her mother to follow Doc Musgrave, because she loved helping the sick. She had been so preoccupied with the problem of making a decision whether to study medicine, when it was unheard of for a woman to do so, that she had not really concerned herself with other matters. Then, in the past twenty-four hours, Nathan Collins had awakened a sleeping giant within her—that giant emotion of womanhood that now made everything in her life so confusing. Her mind ordered her to follow one course—her heart, another. And something else was telling her that war was going to have an effect on both directions of her life.
Each lost in thought, they rode on into Goldsboro without further conversation. Kitty liked the town—the way the railroad tracks ran right down the middle of a crossroads, north and south, with the station house built right in the middle, extending from one side of the main street to the other. The trains passed through the middle of the building, and she hoped she would get to see one of the wood-burning engines chug through while they were in town.
John pulled the wagon up in front of the Griswold Hotel and tied the mule securely to a hitching post. Kitty stared thoughtfully at the huge building. She’d heard it had as many as seventy-six rooms. Feeling a wave of jealousy, she remembered overhearing Nancy Warren at church last summer, bragging about the military ball she had attended there with Nathan in July.
It was close to two o’clock. Her father helped her down from the wagon, then pressed some money in her hand and said, “I’ll meet you here when you’re through with your buying, and we’ll go have some supper at the hotel.”
The hotel—where Nancy had danced in Nathan’s arms in the ballroom. No matter. She had been in his arms yesterday. She would be in them again tomorrow.
She hurried across the street to a dress shop near the hotel, determined to buy the prettiest dress in town.
Time was forgotten as she tried on over a dozen dresses, unable to decide which would make her the most irresistible. There was a pink organdy, but that made her look little-girlish. Then there was a green silk with puffed sleeves and a princess lace collar—but that looked too old and matronly.
The shopkeeper looked annoyed, but Kitty ignored her. The dress had to be just right.
She tried on a yellow barred muslin with large, wide insets of lace around the hem. “Oh, it makes me look so young,” she said woefully, twirling about in front of the full-length mirror.
“Too young…too old,” the shopkeeper pursed her lips, patting the bun at the nape of her neck in a gesture of agitation. “Just what kind of effect are you trying to achieve, young lady? Maybe I could help you if you’d tell me. And where do you plan to wear the dress? It must be something terribly special.”
“Oh, it is,” Kitty replied, feeling the sudden need to share her excitement and happiness. “Nathan Collins has invited me to a party this Sunday afternoon, and I want something very special to wear.”
Her voice trailed off as she caught the look on the shopkeeper’s face by her mirrored reflection. Whirling about, she asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
Her face was turning into mottled shades of red, lips starting to quiver. “I had heard that Nathan had invited someone else to the party. Nancy Warren happens to be my niece, and I know how h
urt she is by his rudeness.
“They were almost betrothed…” she went on, stepping back as though she couldn’t bear to be any closer to her, eyes accusing.
Kitty, like her father, could only be pushed so far, and she never allowed herself to be backed up at all when she was completely innocent. “I didn’t ask Nathan, he asked me,” she said curtly. “If your niece is heartbroken, then maybe she saw more in her relationship with him than actually existed. He certainly didn’t act as if he were doing something he shouldn’t when he invited me to go with him.”
They glared at each other. “Now, are you going to show me some more dresses, or would you rather I take my business elsewhere?” Kitty demanded.
In silent anger, Nancy Warren’s aunt moved about the shop gathering up the ugliest dresses she could find. One was even a black bombazine, and Kitty bit her tongue to keep from saying cattily that Nancy should wear such a garment since she seemed to be in need of a mourning dress.
Afterward, she told herself if she had not been so annoyed, she never would have chosen such a provocative dress. But when she tried it on, twisting about in front of the mirror, the reflection on the other woman’s face told her quite plainly that here was the dress that would make everyone at the party turn their heads in her direction. The menfolk would envy Nathan and the women would be seething with jealousy. Nathan, himself, would be wild with desire for her—she was positive.
The dress was made of bright, blood-red taffeta, and against her creamy white skin and golden-blond hair, the effect was stunning. Her violet eyes seemed to attract the crimson and dance with secret fires. The décolletage was daringly low, and her large, firm breasts were pushed high by the stays—a slight hint of her rosy-pink nipples showing provocatively.
Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 Page 4