The Orphan Mother

by Robert Hicks

  Out the back window, a silhouette made its way through the trees. A woman stepped out of the fallen shadows and into the half-moon’s light.

  Mariah stayed still, watching.

  The woman moved closer, wide-set hips and big-busted, and Mariah recognized her—Henrietta, who worked for Mr. Hill, a big-time banker from Georgia who had come to Franklin so his wife could be closer to her sister. Henrietta did his cooking and his sewing, his house cleaning and his shoe shining, even watched the two young girls when Mr. and Mrs. Hill headed up north to Chicago for business and the theater.

  Henrietta had a round cherub face and black tar skin, and the other ladies, so many years ago, called her “Old Girl.” They’d pat her on the back after a long day of work and say, “It’s gone be okay, Old Girl,” as if she were a horse that needed to be put down. Poor thing came all this way to see me, Mariah thought. She stepped onto the veranda and lit a lamp.

  “Henrietta, sweet thing, you have any idea what time it is?”

  Henrietta walked into the lamplight, out of breath. “Oh, Mariah, it good to see your face.” She walked the few steps up to the house and the two hugged.

  “I thought you was a big fox rustling around in the trees there. You gone get yourself shot walking around this time of night.”

  “Either that walk gettin’ longer or I’m gettin’ older.”

  “What older? You was old when I was a girl, and now I’m gettin’ on in years, you still old.”

  Henrietta smiled, and then stopped smiling. “I come to tell you Ise sorry ’bout your boy.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mariah led her off the porch, down past the two brick two-story cabins, once slave quarters, one of which she still lived in. Inside Mariah’s room, Henrietta spoke with her eyes closed. “You oughta be real proud of Theopolis.”

  “It wasn’t havin’ pride that was the problem. No sense, maybe.”

  “They say you wasn’t there that morning, didn’t come to see him speak.”

  “That’s right. I even asked him not to do it. But you know how he was. Stubborn damn fool.”

  “Just like his mama.”

  Mariah did not smile.

  “I don’t know much of what happened,” Henrietta said. “Wish I did. But I’ve been listening to Mr. Hill in the dining room. His dinner guests like to talk about it over supper.”

  Mariah held her breath.

  “He say Theopolis leapt into the crowd and cut three throats before he was brought down low like he was.”

  “You believe that?”

  “No ma’am, I don’t.”

  “What else you heard?”

  “That it was three white men that killed him. Conservatives.”

  “What their names?”

  “Can’t say I’ve heard any names.”

  “Some boys from Nashville came down this way yesterday to take the testimony of any folks who might know about the killings that day.”

  “Yes ma’am. The whole town’s been talking about it.”

  “You know if Mr. Hill was one?”

  “He was. No way for me to know what he said. Even if he saw somethin’, he ain’t the type to get himself in trouble.”

  Mariah thought. “You remember some years ago, there was a girl came all the way from North Carolina, outside of Raleigh, I think it was, and she worked for some lawyer I think, cleaned the small brick building in the shadow of the courthouse on the corner of the square. That sound familiar to you?”

  “You talkin’ about Della, ma’am. Man up there named Mr. Burch. He a lawyer, you right about that.”

  “That’s the one. Della. Heard her daddy died of the hiccups. You think there’s any truth to that?”

  Henrietta laughed. “Oh Mariah, you makin’ that up.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “Why you askin’ about Della?”

  “I have this memory of her, hangin’ out her garments in the sun one morning, six in the morning, somethin’ like that, and she was goin’ on about how she enjoyed moppin’ the floors and shining the silver in that building. She said it was ’cause that office had the best view of the main square. Best view in the whole town, she said. And sometimes she’d look out the window at the men down below and make up stories for them, for where they were walkin’. She liked tellin’ that story. I always got the feelin’ she enjoyed it way up wherever, lookin’ down on people.”

  “Della not that way. She been through a lot.”

  “You tell her to come see me, would you?”

  “I’ll tell her, ma’am.” And Henrietta would do it, sure enough, because the other thing about Mariah was that folks were afraid of her. Mariah took some pride in that.

  * * *

  Soon once or twice a day someone would appear walking on the road, or riding in a cart, or sneaking through the backwoods in their domestic uniform or their work dungarees. Carrie told Mariah she was touched by the grief of her friends and acquaintances who came bearing all those condolences. They did bear condolences, always. Mariah I am sorry, Mariah he was a good boy, Mariah no man deserve that, Mariah you strong, Mariah you were a good mama to him, Mariah he made the most beautiful shoes. The long, slow march of servants to and from Carnton was full of grief, but also full of slyness and even a kind of pride. They had information to give her.

  Mariah met with them in the kitchen out of earshot of Carrie. Sometimes she shooed off the cook, but the times when they had visitors were the times those two got along best, so often Mariah let her stay. The girl would serve up some tea, and Mariah would face her visitors across the small wooden table where the kitchen help ate, praying that they would have something of use for her, something that would not only explain who killed her son, but why, and possibly even what she could do about it.

  She quickly learned the virtue of patience, as most of her conversations went something like this:

  “I heard something, Mariah.”

  “Yes?”

  “He was killed by white men. In the square. White men. Did you know that?”

  Or this:

  “I heard that Theopolis had a thousand dollars in French coins sewed into the lining of his coat, and they was after that when they dragged him down.”

  Or this:

  “I heard Theopolis leapt into the crowd and pulled a man’s heart out through his chest before he was brought down low like he was. He were a battlin’ man.”

  But sometimes even when the information was of limited use, the wild imagined stories of bored servants sitting in pantries and on chopping stumps, they held pieces of something that Mariah began to stitch together.

  “I heard Theopolis’s haint haunts Elijah Dixon’s house.”

  “There was a bloody axe I took, someone tossed it under the stage. Not sure what it got to do with nothing, but thought you should see it.”

  “I seen with my own eyes two white men fighting over whether Theo should speak that day. Those Conservatives, you best believe they didn’t want him talking. All those speeches were getting them real mad. They don’t even want us colored folks votin’, so they sure as hell don’t want us speakin’.”

  “The grocer closed early that day, said he might be closed a couple days. I know because I went to get the missus some of that licorice that just come in. He was carrying an axe handle and said he had to go get it its head, that it was missing a head.”

  “The doctor’s house was as hot as blazes when we got back home, the door and a window were open, and some things had been pushed around in the attic. Nothing were stolen, but there was the shape of a man in the dust under the window. I know what I think, and I said it to them plain as day, but the doctor don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Mariah was grateful for the information and rewarded her visitors with butter or flour or some good thread she’d been hoarding in a stash for many years. She thanked them, everyone, even those whose information was less than useful. She saw them to the door and watched them disappear back down the road. She invited them all back
.

  I want to know everything. She tried to fit the puzzle pieces together, every stray bit of nonsense that nevertheless contained some bit of the plausible. But without knowing how the pieces all fit together, she could do little with them except dream of ghosts and French coins falling from the sky.

  Chapter 14

  Tole

  July 10, 1867

  Tole’s shaking hands woke him that morning. He sat up in bed and poured himself a shot of whiskey, syrupy thick and honey-colored. He threw his head back, one gulp, before lying back down. It was usually a shot of bourbon that would get him out of bed in the mornings; this morning it was two shots. He would need steady hands to do this job, he knew that much.

  Today was the day.

  Tole’s plan for Jesse Bliss was simple enough: Bliss would take his mother to the Presbyterian church on Main Street for prayer meeting. The service was usually over by 6 p.m. by Tole’s count, and then Bliss and his frail mother, both dressed solemnly in black, she in white gloves and he in his orange-feathered hat with a pistol of his own strapped to his ankle, would walk the few blocks to his family’s home, where Bliss’s wife, a Campbellite, would be waiting to greet them. Then he’d leave the women to their tea and head down to Main Street, where he would spend the rest of his evening looking in at the shops.

  Dixon told Tole to get Bliss alone, somewhere quiet, an empty street or some deserted alleyway. “Get up nice and close and kill the bastard,” Dixon said, his words echoing through Tole’s head. “Quick shot. Don’t take chances.”

  There was always a certain amount of space between Tole and the men he killed. Even in the war, he made sure to never get too close. Something about the distance made it easier for him to accept what he would do. He thought to himself, You get too close and you’re not just killing the man, you’re taking his soul. There was an empty attic space just above a brothel where he decided he could hide. He would have a clean shot at Bliss from up there. The maidens and the hookers and the wastrels had an arrangement with the local police, and there’d be no law poking around. Nobody would see Tole enter or leave. He would be little more than a ghost.

  Blackbirds found sun-dappled branches to gather on as Tole walked through town with his usual pained gait, down an alley and into the back door of the whorehouse, up three flights of steps to the attic.

  Tole knew that if he didn’t agree to kill Jesse Bliss, he would be dead himself in a matter of days. And while he didn’t mind dying, there were just a few things he needed to see to before they put him in the ground. A few things he needed to make right.

  He reckoned he had half an hour before Bliss would stroll down Indigo Street. Outside the attic window he heard chatter and street noise, the repetitive clatter of rolling horse carts and the rhythmic knock of women’s heels. He pushed open the window that looked out onto Walnut Street, letting waves of heat slither their way into the small space.

  Finally Bliss’s barrel-shaped body marched down Main Street, two men strolling behind him.

  It was time.

  Tole peered through the sight, but at first couldn’t find Bliss. He looked up—there was Bliss, unconcerned, peering at the haberdasher’s display.

  Tole’s hands shook. They never shook. Well, they never shook this bad.

  He looked through the sights again and he saw the mob beating Theopolis again, he heard the gunshots, saw the blood spilling in the courthouse square. It was all right there, spread out before him. He closed his eyes and opened them again, pressing his cheek to the stock. He knew he couldn’t kill this man, that he couldn’t bring himself to do it, and as sharp a shooter as he’d been, he no longer trusted himself to wound the man without killing him. Even a bullet to the meaty part of the thigh could rupture an artery, or turn in ways you’d never expect and end up in the pelvis, where surely a painful death would follow.

  Only one option seemed open.

  Tole set ol’ GT on the floorboards, reached into his back pocket for a piece of paper and a pencil, scribbled a note. Down the stairs he went, past the hookers and the businessmen, out the door, and around to Main Street.

  He walked up to Bliss and stood beside him. He dropped the piece of paper. “You Mr. Jesse Bliss?”

  Bliss looked at him, startled. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I think you dropped a piece of paper there, sir,” Tole said, and walked quickly away, turning down the nearest alley. There was a white bar at the end of the alley where the old, one-armed proprietor knew Tole to have been a soldier. Sometimes he would let him drink if there weren’t any white men to object.

  A moment later Bliss came in, clutching the folded piece of paper, on it the shaky-handed scribbles of a child, Tole’s handwriting: Follow me. I can save your life.

  The bar was dark, blanketed with shadows, some rainwater still puddled in the crevices, and Bliss’s wood-bottomed shoes knocked loudly as he approached Tole, who leaned against the closet door.

  Bliss whispered, “What’s this all about?”

  Tole gestured for him to sit, but Bliss refused. “I prefer to stand for now. I asked you a question: who are you, and what is it you want?” He removed his feathered hat. The daylight lit his pale face and he seemed to glow from the neck up, except for the dark beard that lined his round chin and the dull brown, hooded eyes.

  “My name is George Tole. You be dead if it wasn’t for me, Mr. Bliss.”

  “Dead? And how do you know this?”

  “’Cause I the man supposed to kill you.”

  Bliss said nothing, just stared. Tole could watch his mind working, wondering if this might be some kind of trap. An ambush by a poor nigger luring him down an alley into a dark bar under the excuse of saving his life, only to mug him, rob him, cut his throat. Bliss slowly reached for the pistol on his leg.

  “You ain’t gonna need no pistol. I’m unarmed. Left my rifle behind. You wanna kill me, you can. But I’m here because I didn’t want to kill you, not because I couldn’t, so I’d hate for you to force my hand.”

  Bliss straightened. “All right then. Let’s say I believe what you’re saying. You say you’re supposed to kill me?”

  “Yes sir. Was s’posed to shoot you in the head just four days back, at the speeches in the courthouse square.”

  “But it was John Sykes and that other boy, the Negro shoemaker, who got killed that morning.”

  “That’s right,” Tole said. “The Negro shoemaker was named Reddick.”

  “Reddick, that’s it. Theopolis, I believe.”

  It gratified Tole that Bliss should remember Theopolis’s name. He wondered if Bliss knew Theopolis as a politician or as the man who made his shoes.

  “That’s the morning,” Tole said.

  “So I was the target?”

  “If it wasn’t for Theopolis taking the stage first, you wouldn’t be sittin’ here, sure as day.”

  “And so now you come to finish the job?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Who’s payin’ you, boy?”

  “Man named Elijah Dixon pay me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Bliss said. “He hired you? No wonder it was a disaster.”

  “He heard some rumors said I was pretty good with a rifle.”

  “That true?”

  Tole took a pause and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “All men good at somethin’. Some good at talkin’, some at makin’ laws, some at makin’ whiskey. I was good at killin’. You ask me what I wanted to be, I’d say an artist, maybe. Some kinda job where you use your hands to make things beautiful. But that’s not the way it is. I a killer, and I been good at it.”

  “So why you tellin’ me this? Why not put a bullet in my head? You don’t need the money?”

  “I reckon I killed enough innocent men in my day. Maybe you innocent, maybe you not. I’ll let God decide. And someday you’ll be face-to-face with him, but I don’t wanna be the one to send you. I done enough of that.”

  “So Dixon wants me dead. They had asked me, during my depos
ition the other day, if I had any reason to believe I was a target, and I said no. I should’ve known. I just can’t believe he would hire a nigger to do the job, except it’s perfect. If everything goes wrong, he’s got you to blame, some crazy Negro with a gun. And it sure did go wrong, didn’t it?”

  “Sure did.”

  A pause. Bliss removed his hat and set it on the bar, damp with stale beer and littered with peanut shells.

  “You take this with you. You tell that son bitch Dixon you found me and killed me dead, just like he asked.”

  “You think he’ll believe me? Just like that?”

  “Don’t matter. I just need to buy myself some time. A week, maybe two.”

  Bliss was standing from his barstool when Tole stopped him. “One question, sir. Why he want you dead?”

  “No idea. But I’m going to find out.” Bliss eyed him. “You know how to read?”

  “’Course. Grew up in New York City.”

  “City boy, are you? All right then. That’s good.” Bliss pulled out the scrap of paper on which Tole had written his note. “Set your address down here for me. Might be some time, a week or so, but you should expect a letter. Soon as I figure out what’s going on. I’m going to figure it out, and you know what? I’m not going to let the son of a bitch get away with it.”

  “You best disappear now. Them boys gone be lookin’ for you. They find out we lyin’, we both dead.”

  “You did a good thing, warnin’ me ’bout all this.”

  “Maybe.” Tole nodded. “We’ll just have to see how good it is.” Bliss pushed his feathered hat a little closer to Tole and walked out the front door of the saloon.

  Tole stayed until night fell, held the hat on his lap, and blessed himself for the first time since his boy died. He had to go see Elijah Dixon and tell him he killed Jesse Bliss out by the Harpeth River, and left his body to make its way out toward New Orleans many miles and twists of river away.