by Cody Lennon
“Well, tell me what the pictures are saying to you,” she said, resting her head cozily on my shoulder.
Time seemed to freeze, and in that moment of arresting silence when the entire world shrunk to the size of one little boy’s bedroom, my affection for her grew tenfold. Her presence and touch filled me with a swirling sensation of anxiousness and bliss. I had never felt anything so real in my life. With her, I didn’t feel alone, or scared of my past, or embarrassed of my inabilities.
The blessing of such jubilation was something entirely new to me. Tess was more than just a warm body nestled up against me. She represented the reverse of all the abuse and neglect in my life up to then. I was like this Corduroy. I may be missing a button or two, but it wasn’t stopping this girl from accepting me.
Chapter 13
April 6
The nightly naval bombardments continued to wreak havoc on the city of Savannah. Every night for almost an hour, the U.S. Navy would shell the city, targeting mostly government buildings and military installations. In three days, seven hundred people had been killed, half of those being civilians, whose lives were involuntarily uprooted by the deadly artillery. Emergency crews, as well as search and rescue teams from the Army, worked day and night to find the bloodied corpses in the piles of rubble that pockmarked the city.
Because of the increased likelihood of invasion, Savannah was placed under martial law. The once prosperous and culturally extravagant city began to shut down. Nobody was allowed out on the streets after dark. That curfew was strictly enforced by military police.
However difficult these extraordinary turn of events were, the people of Savannah took them in stride. They continued to live their days like normal as best they could. Schools, mail service, movie theaters, banks, everything was operating normally, until they were forced to close an hour before sunset.
When the sun went down, the city was still. Not a soul, not a stray cat, not even a mouse could be found outside after dark.
By midnight, the city would burn with the orange glow of hundreds of new fires. By noon the next day, the city would be overcast with tall pillars of sinister smoke and pale, smoldering ashes.
The artillery never fell anywhere near the Redman Plantation. We were far away from the city. In actuality, we might have been closer to the U.S. Navy than the city they were shelling.
I would sit out on the porch with Alex and Mr. Redman watching the shimmering light of the burning city above the tree line. We brooded in silence with heavy hearts. There was nothing we could do. At least, not yet. Alex and I would be shipping off at the end of the week. Put a rifle in my hands and I’ll make the Yankees pay for all this careless destruction.
It was a gloomy Wednesday morning. I woke up before the sun rose and the predawn showers ended. Mr. Redman would be down a few minutes after me. He’d make us coffee and I’d help him with whatever project he wanted to work on. This time it was the pasture fence. It was in shambles and several of the posts needed replacing, along with a number of rotten boards.
Alex came out with tired eyes and chastised us for hammering so loudly that early in the morning. I handed him a bucket of nails and he joined our morning work crew.
“Lift up that end a little, Colton. It’s sitting cattywampus,” Mr. Redman said. I lifted the board up a few inches and Alex hammered in the nails. “There. That looks good.”
“Here comes Tess,” Alex said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. “How much you want to bet that she missed the bus to school?”
“Look at these three handsome men out working so early,” she said.
“Spit it out,” Mr. Redman said.
“Spit what out?”
“You missed the bus, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Sam didn’t wake you?”
“No sir.”
“I swear, sometimes that boy doesn’t make any sense.” Mr. Redman stuck the posthole diggers he had been holding into the moist ground. “Alright, let me go find my keys and I’ll drive you.”
“No, you don’t have to. Colton can take me,” she said matter-of-factly.
Alex and Mr. Redman looked at me, bewildered and amazed. There was a moment of awkward silence as I stood there as if I was on trial. Alex knew that Tess and I had been spending a lot of time together, because he had been teasing me about it, but Mr. Redman suspected nothing. At least, I hoped he didn’t.
“You heard the lady,” Alex spoke up finally, giving me a subtle wink.
I handed my hammer to Alex and hurdled over the fence.
“What was that about?” I heard Mr. Redman ask Alex, as Tess and I walked back to the house.
Tess grabbed her father’s keys off the foyer table and we drove off in her dad’s truck. Her school was only a few miles down the road, so it was an easy drive for me. Mr. Jeffries taught me how to drive the tractor when I was ten. Driving a truck wasn’t that much different. Whenever Alex and I would go out, I’d watch what he did when he drove. He gave me a few cracks at the wheel. It wasn’t so hard. I was a fast learner.
With Tess navigating me, I got her to school on time. The school was a two story, brick structure with a covered walkway leading to the front door.
I pulled up to the curb in front of the main building. There were clusters of students lounging around talking, waiting for class. Most of them were female, I noticed. The few males I did see were very young. Then I remembered what Alex said about Army recruiters taking kids right out of school.
Tess waved to a group of her friends and then unclipped her seatbelt. “Thanks for driving me.”
“Anytime.”
“You don’t like to talk much do you?” she asked.
“Not really, no.”
She giggled and said, “A man of few words,” as she got out of the truck. She grabbed her book bag from the bed of the truck and reappeared. “I have a volleyball match after school today if you want to come. Momma said she couldn’t go and Dad’s always busy doing something. It’d be nice to have someone there to cheer for me.”
“I’d love to.”
“Great. The game’s at four.” She shut the door as the school bell rang and gaily trotted to her friends. They circled around her, barraging her with questions about the strange boy driving her to school. I could see them all giggling when they took their turns peeking back at me as they walked to class.
I geared the truck into drive and followed my memory back home.
*
I worked with Alex and Mr. Redman the majority of the day. We quickly discovered that fixing the fence would be a multi-day project.
A little after three o’clock I took a shower and put on fresh clothes. I already had asked Mr. Redman if I could borrow the truck to go see Tess’s game. He said yes.
I went back into the bathroom to grab my watch that I left on the sink. When I came back into the bedroom, Lucas was there waiting.
“Hey buddy,” I said, sliding on a belt.
“Where you going?”
“I’m going to watch Tess’s volleyball game.”
Lucas rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his fist. He had just woken up from his customary after-school nap.
“Can I come?”
“You got to ask your parents.”
I followed him downstairs, his little legs moving almost as fast as his mouth saying “momma” over and over again.
“What honey?” Mrs. Redman was washing dishes in the sink.
“Can I go to Tess’s volleyball game with Colton?” He asked, tugging at her pant leg.
Mrs. Redman wiped her hands off on a dish towel and looked up at me.
“No, baby. You have homework to do.”
“But Momma, it’s so easy. I can do it later.”
“I said no, Luke.” She looked at me again with scornful eyes. I felt like she was really saying no to me.
“Let him go, Beth.” Mr. Redman’s voice came from the library across the hall.
“Silas,” she huffed as he ca
me into the kitchen.
“It’d be good for him. Those boys spend half their day at school and the rest cooped up in this house. Let him go. He can take Ben too.”
Mrs. Redman turned red in the face and said, “Silas, this is the safest place for them.”
“They’ll be fine Bethany. Colton will bring them home well before dark, won’t you, Colton?”
I nodded and suffered through Mrs. Redman’s fiery glare.
“Yeah Mom, Colton will take care of me. He’s an army man like Daddy and Alex,” Lucas said.
“I want him back by five o’clock. Not a minute later.” And with that we were gone. I didn’t need to experience Mrs. Redman’s wrath any longer than I had to.
The volleyball game was in a musty gymnasium at Tess’s school. The walls were a whitish-blue, with dark blue bleachers and a shiny, polished court. There were maybe thirty other people that came to watch the game. We sat in the third row and clapped loudly when Tess’s team came out of the locker room. She smiled and waved at us as she jogged by in her team outfit, a green jersey with the number seven on it, short black shorts with matching knee pads and shoes.
The whistle blew to start the match.
It didn’t take me long to understand the concept of the game.
Tess’s team took the lead quickly, but soon was down fifteen to fourteen. I’d gone to get a couple hot dogs for the boys. When I returned, Tess’s team was up by one.
“What I miss?” I asked.
They didn’t answer me. They were too busy eating their hot dogs.
The other team tied up the game with a spike to center court. Tess’s coach called time out. Tess looked our way and smiled as she approached the bench and toweled the sweat off her face.
“Tess likes you,” Lucas said, chewing his hotdog with an open mouth.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Cause she said so.”
“When?”
“I heard her and Alex talking last night.” You sly little devil. A whistle shrilled at the end of the timeout.
“Oh yeah?”
“And then she started crying and saying that she didn’t want you and Alex to leave.”
I hadn’t even thought about having to leave. I’d lived in the moment the entire week, nearly forgetting that I only had a few days left before I headed off to war. I didn’t want to leave. I loved living at the Redman’s.
Tess scored the next point for her team with a powerful spike over center court. The score was now twenty to twenty.
“Are you a good army man?” Lucas asked, his blue eyes peering up at me.
“I’d say so. What do you think?”
“You’re really nice. Daddy told Momma that they had to watch out for bad army men.”
“You don’t worry about those bad army men, okay? Alex and I are going to deal with them,” I said, rustling his tufty hair.
“Okay.” A little boy shouldn’t have to worry over such grown up things.
Lucas smeared a little mustard on his chin. I wiped it off with my napkin as he returned his focus back to his sister.
“Are you going to kill the Yankees?” Ben asked.
Ever since Basic, killing was on the back of my mind. We had only shot at paper targets. Hardly a substitute for the flesh and bone of a human body. Now that the war was right around the corner, the idea of killing another human being outright terrified me.
“I don’t know, Ben. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you guys.”
Tess’s team went up twenty-three to twenty-two.
“You’re coming back though, right?” Lucas asked, his little legs swinging off the edge of the seat.
“Yeah buddy, I’m coming back,” I said, not for one second believing otherwise.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
The buzzer announced the end of the game and both teams lined up to shake hands.
The gym cleared out, but the three of us stayed and watched the maintenance guy re-polish the floor as we waited for Tess. She came out a few minutes later, her backpack flung over her shoulder and a frown on her face.
“Great game,” I said. She gave me a high five and then hugged Lucas and Ben.
“Yeah, but we lost.”
“But you didn’t give up.”
We pulled up to the house at four fifty-eight. Two minutes shy of Mrs. Redman skinning my hide.
*
Mrs. Redman cooked another scrumptious dinner for the family, all the while, refraining from any interaction with me. I don’t know what she was mad about, I brought her boys back before five. Either way, I stayed out of her way as best I could. Perhaps I’m overstaying my welcome.
At dinner, Lucas couldn’t stop talking about the volleyball game. Tess picked a fight with Sam for not waking her up for school. Sarah was getting aggravated because Ben kept flinging food at her. And Alex and his father talked about the war, again. I sat there, enjoying the family chaos. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
After dinner, I had a beer with Alex on the back porch and listened to the nightlife, all the crickets, owls, katydids and cicadas that give the night its familiarly soothing din of clicks, whistles and hoots.
Lucas allowed me to borrow his Corduroy book and every night I’d sit down with Alex and stammer out a few words. I was learning how to read. I mean actually read.
If we heard someone coming out of the house, Alex would sit on the book to hide it. He knew how embarrassed I felt about the matter.
After two beers and a slurry of mispronounced words, I told Alex goodnight and withdrew to my room. I liked a little me time at the end of the day.
With Corduroy in hand, I sat down on the edge of my bed and decided to give reading a try on my own.
Sudden…ly…he…felt…the…f-ffloor…move…moving…un…under…him. Qu…qui…quit…by…acts…actsdent…he…stepped…on…to…an…exlater…and…up…he…went.
I don’t know how much of that was my ability to read, or rather my memory of reading the words twenty times already that evening, but I was immensely proud of myself.
A knock at the door caused me to stuff the book under the mattress.
“Come in.”
Tess came in leading Lucas by the hand. They both were in their pajamas. Tess in a pair of her volleyball shorts and an old t-shirt with a stretched out neck that fell loosely off to one shoulder and little Lucas in a night shirt that went all the way to his knees.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “He wanted to say goodnight to you.”
“Night night, buddy. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, giving him a hug.
“Goodnight,” he said tiredly.
“Go and brush your teeth and I’ll come tuck you in,” Tess said.
“I can tuck myself in.” Lucas left with his head held high.
“He really likes you,” she said.
“He’s a good kid.”
“I really appreciate you coming to my game today. And bringing the boys. I know they liked it.”
“I enjoyed it.”
Tess stood in the doorway leaning against the door frame, her hands clasped behind her back cushioning her weight. She wanted to say something.
She could stand there forever and I could look at her forever, she was so beautiful.
“Can I bend your ear for a minute?” she asked shyly.
“Sure.”
“I have something to show you. Give me one second.” She disappeared into her room across the hall and came back with her computer tablet in hand. It was a smaller version of the one Shannon had used during the field exercise, but this one was not military in nature.
She closed the door behind her, crawled onto my bed and sat cross-legged in the center. I crawled up next to her, our knees gently touching.
“I’ve been doing some research,” she said.
“On what?”
“You.”
“Me?” I asked, surprised.
“Alex told me about you.�
� He did what?
“What did he tell you?” I said this much harsher than I intended.
“Everything.” Tess looked at me imploringly, expecting a reaction. My face may have remained stoic, but my mind was reeling. How could he? He promised not to tell. Now Tess is only going to see me as some pitiful boy with a fucked up past. I hoped she would like me. How could she now?
“Don’t be mad at him. He’s my twin brother. We tell each other everything.”
Take a deep breath and relax. I cupped my face in my hands and massaged my temples with my fingertips.
Tess put her hand on my thigh and said, “It’s okay. Your secret is safe with me.”
I let my hands fall from my face, my fingertips gently overlapping hers. You can trust her.
“I’m going to kick his ass in the morning,” I said lightheartedly. What was done was done. There was no going back.
“If you’re going to kick somebody’s ass, it should be mine. I made him tell me. You’re very intriguing, Colton. You don’t talk very much. I wanted to know who you are. And what he told me, it was---your story is unreal. I had a hard time believing any of it, so I searched the internet looking for any explanation. What I found was horrific.”
Maybe she knew the answers to the questions I had been asking myself my entire life.
Tess shifted onto her stomach and laid across my bed holding the tablet out in front of her. I followed suit and laid beside her, our shoulders softly touching and our faces only a few inches apart. Her smell was entrancing. It wasn’t body wash or shampoo or anything flowery that I smelled, no, it was her natural smell. It was something familiar that I had grown accustomed to.
With a few taps and swipes she pulled up an article on her tablet. “I found several news articles about modern day slavery in the Confederacy. It seems that people like you aren’t entirely rare. More like uncommon. But you, Private Tennpenny, are unique in one way.”
“How so?”
“You’re white. Most modern slaves are either black or immigrants. I tried googling your name, but nothing came up. Tennpenny is not a very common surname.” She said all this without looking up from the screen. “The most likely scenario I could imagine is that somehow your parents owed a debt to this Mr. Stephens and they used you to pay it.”