Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “Ma?” he called, as the chill of the gathering darkness seemed to spread right through him. He had the awful feeling that the darkness was the angel of death passing over the farm, and his mother was about to die.

  “Ma!” he cried, as he ran across the horse lot and the back yard, bounding up the back steps of the house and bursting into her room. His mother lay still as a corpse, her eyes peacefully closed.

  “Oh, Ma!” he whispered, and dropped to his knees beside her bed. “Oh, Ma!” and the words choked out of him as he buried his head in her coverlet. “I love you, Ma! Please come back to me. Please come back . . .”

  “I love you, too, son,” Alice Jane said, her sleep disturbed by her son’s pleading. “Come back from where?”

  “I thought . . .” he was almost afraid to look up at her for fear that she was a specter already. “I thought you were dead, Ma. I thought the dark was the angel of death.”

  “The dark?” she asked, then she smiled weakly and reached out her hand to touch his sandy hair. “Why, that’s just the eclipse comin’ on, John Henry. Didn’t your father tell you?”

  “Pa’s gone, out at the orchard or somewhere. I was goin’ out too when the sun started to go away.”

  “The sun’s not goin’ away, though it looks like it is. It’s just an eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and blocks the light. It’s a miracle in the sky . . .” She stopped talking a moment, and took a ragged, weary breath. “I saw a miracle myself, once . . .” Her eyes closed again, and for a moment John Henry thought she had gone back to sleep.

  “What was that, Ma?” he asked, fearful of her sleep almost as much as he was of her death. One day she might drift off and never come back again.

  “They called it the Fallin’ of the Stars,” she said, her eyes still closed. “It happened away back in 1833 when I was just a little girl. My father woke us all with his shoutin’, tellin’ us to come look quick.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “The stars fallin’ down from the sky. My father called it a star-shower. It looked like the whole sky was comin’ down in a fiery blaze, so bright and hot that I thought the stars would set the ground on fire. But they never really touched the earth. My father said they all burned up before they reached the ground. It was on that night that I first understood the glory of God, when the heavens came right down into our barnyard.” Then she started coughing, so hard that her whole body heaved with the sound of it, and John Henry had to look away. He couldn’t stand to see her sick like this, and couldn’t stand the helpless way he felt in the face of it.

  “I’ll go now, Ma,” he said, standing up and taking a step away from her. “You need to rest . . .”

  “No!” she said quickly, her eyes wide open again. “I want to tell you somethin’, John Henry. I felt the heavens close to me the night of that star-shower, but I feel them closer now. You know your mother is gonna be passin’ on . . .”

  He nodded an answer, his heart too full for words. I know, he thought. I have known too long . . .

  “I am not afraid to go, John Henry. The Lord has been good to me, and I expect he’ll be merciful to me when I cross. But I do worry over you, my sweet boy. I do worry about your welfare. You have so much that is good within you, if you will only hold fast to the things I’ve tried to teach you and stay close to the Lord and keep his word . . .”

  “I will, Ma! I will be good, I promise!”

  “Remember how I loved you, and how God loves you.” Then she added softly: “Your father loves you, too. I know he may not show it very often, but in his heart, he cares for you more than he even knows. Be patient with him, please. As our Lord is patient with us in our weakness, learn to be patient, too.”

  He nodded again, trying hard to hold back tears, but his mother closed her eyes again, worn out from the words. “Now go on outside and see the eclipse, John Henry. It won’t last too long. It’s a miracle in the sky, and you may never see another one. Go see it for me, too, all right?”

  “All right, Ma,” he said, leaning down to give her a kiss before he left, thankful beyond words that she was still alive. “I love you, Ma,” he said again, knowing he could never say it enough.

  Outside, the sun had all but disappeared, only a circle of light hiding behind the darkness of the moon. But at least it wasn’t Judgment Day yet, he thought with relief, or the Angel of Death passing over either—not yet.

  But the Angel of Death was hovering nearby and it came on dark wings at Christmastime and wearing Yankee blue. For the Yankees had not forgotten the embarrassment of young Dick Force’s escape from his military jail cell, any more than they had forgotten that the Southerners had been their sworn enemy, and they were only waiting until the Captain came out of hiding to make him an example to the people of Lowndes County. And unwittingly, Dick Force obliged them by answering an invitation from his sister to leave his river hideaway and come join the family for Christmas Dinner. If his sister hadn’t invited the whole church congregation to come along too, he might have had a peaceful meal.

  John Henry was part of the crowd of well-wishers standing in the Force’s front yard on the cold December afternoon when Dick rode up the long dirt drive to his home. His sister was waiting for him on the porch, laughing about the surprise he would have when he saw the whole Methodist congregation there to welcome him home. But just as the Captain turned his horse into the yard and raised a hand to wave at his sister, shots rang out from the trees along the drive. The Captain cried out and slumped forward over his horse as his sister screamed, but no one dared run to his aid as the Yankee Lieutenant rode out from a hiding place in the trees. It seemed that word of Dick Force’s visit home had reached the garrison, as unguarded words always reach someone’s waiting ears.

  “You Rebs can run all day if you want,” the arrogant Yank said as he rode onto the drive, his revolver still smoking in his hand, “but this is our country now, and we’ll find you eventually. Let young Force here tell you how much good your swaggering and swearing will do. You’re beat, Rebs!” Then he wheeled his horse and rode right down the driveway, safe from retribution in that goodly group of church members, while Dick Force lay panting for breath and bleeding on his saddle. To John Henry, still angry over what the Yanks had done to Mattie’s father, it was too much to be borne. He was about to run for his own horse, where he kept his shotgun hanging from his saddle scabbard, when one of the church founders stepped out onto the porch.

  “Leave him be,” Major William Bessant said, raising his hands as though preaching a sermon, though his real career was the law. Bessant was the leading attorney in Valdosta, and folks listened when he spoke. “Boys, pull the door off that outhouse and carry Dick inside on it. And the rest of y’all listen to me. Evil work was done here today, we all know that. Dick’s crime didn’t deserve jailin’, let alone shootin’. He’s just a hot-headed boy, still angry over the War and the way the darkies are turnin’ against us, sidin’ with the Yanks. It’s an insult to all of us that Washington sent colored troops here to keep their peace, and no wonder Dick felt like insultin’ one of them. I feel like throwin’ some insults their way, myself. But my friends, look where Dick’s insults have led. He’s shot down right in his own yard, and we have no authority to do anything about it. As long as that Federal garrison is camped out in our streets, they are the law. But there is a higher authority than the United States government. The wicked may be in power, but God is in his heaven.” Then his voice rose, and he stood, white-haired and glorious as an Old Testament prophet full of righteous indignation. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay!”

  Major Bessant’s words were meant to calm the angry crowd, but they only made John Henry’s blood boil all the hotter. Vengeance might indeed be the Lord’s, but sometimes the Lord’s work needed human hands.

  Chapter Four

  VALDOSTA, 1866

  BUT VENGEANCE WAITED WHILE DICK FORCE LANGUISHED OF HIS gangrenous wounds and the winter
came on even harder than the one before, the weather so cold that cowsmilk turned solid in the milk buckets and crops froze right in the ground. Deer made bold by a lack of forage came out of the woods and down into the farmyard to share the horses’ feed, and yellow-eyed possums slunk under the porch, looking for remains of the cats’ dinners. Even the people seemed like feral creatures, lean and hungry and desperate. The only good news was the end of the Yankee occupation and the slow awakening of the businesses in town, though times remained almost as hard as they had been during the war.

  “Might as well live away up in the mountains, for this cold,” Henry Holliday said as he came in from the orchard one evening, chilled and rosy-cheeked from the frigid wind. “Get me a drink from under the sideboard there, John Henry. I may lose this crop, too, if the weather doesn’t break soon, damn the weather and the Yankees both. I’ve got enough trouble already, what with the cut worm and the boll weevil and the rust.”

  John Henry opened the sideboard door slowly, hoping that his father wouldn’t notice how much of the liquor had disappeared. Though he’d stopped stealing his father’s whiskey for himself following his mother’s chastisement, he’d borrowed enough for the Captain to nearly empty the bottle.

  “Where’s my drink, son?” Henry said, and John Henry poured all that was left into a tumbler. Enough, he hoped, to satisfy his father.

  “Looks like it’s almost gone, Pa,” he said with studied blue-eyed innocence as he handed his father the glass. “Guess you’ll be needin’ to get some more.”

  But Henry seemed, thankfully, not to be paying attention to him as he pulled off his heavy great coat and thick woolen gloves. “Damn that fool Congress up in Washington with their Constitutional Amendments! First the Thirteenth to free the slaves, now this Fourteenth they want ratified givin’ all coloreds the rights of white men. Freein’ the slaves was one thing, but making them equal to whites! ‘Civil Rights’ they call it. What about my civil rights? My people helped to build this country. My grandfathers fought in the Revolutionary War. Hell, I fought for the United States, myself, back in the Mexican War!”

  John Henry was used to his father’s tirades and usually didn’t pay much attention, but his ears perked up when Henry mentioned Mexico. Those stories were still his favorites, far more adventurous and romantic than the cold reality of the War of Secession. In exotic places like Vera Cruz and Monterrey, in the wilds of Texas and the paradise of California, the Americans had fought against foreign imperialists and added a million square miles to the American territories. The Mexican War had been a hero-maker, giving glorious careers to future Rebels and Yankees, both: Winfield Scott, George McClellan, Ulysses S. Grant, even General Robert E. Lee, himself. Henry Holliday had fought beside all those men, and come home a hero, too.

  And Henry had brought more than just his brave stories home with him. He’d brought an unusual souvenir as well: a Mexican orphan boy named Francisco Hidalgo, whose parents had been killed in the fighting. Henry, who was still a bachelor at the time, had given the boy a home and sent him to school, and Francisco had repaid him by serving as his valet and teaching him the tricks of the Mexican card game called Spanish Monte. It was a complicated game that matched suits to a dealer’s hand, and the American soldiers had picked it up and tried to cheat using marked cards. But the Mexicans knew how to win with straight cards, and Francisco had passed the skill along to Henry, and it had paid off well in the saloons of Georgia.

  Francisco was grown and married now, living on a farm in Jenkins-burg, near to Griffin, and until John Henry’s family had moved away to Valdosta, they had paid him regular visits. Henry treated him like one of the family, kin almost, and Francisco returned the sentiment, naming one of his own sons John in honor of John Henry. And when Francisco went off to defend the Confederacy as a private in the Georgia Volunteer Infantry, he took one of Henry Holliday’s pistols with him. But John Henry’s fondest memory of Francisco Hidalgo was the Spanish he had learned from him as a child. Being able to understand and speak a little of a foreign language gave him a certain status among his schoolmates who were still struggling with English rhetoric and basic Latin grammar.

  And thinking of English and Latin, he remembered something the town boys had told him. “Pa? Did you know there’s a new school opening up over in Valdosta? The Valdosta Institute they’re callin’ it. I hear the teacher’s as good as anybody up in Griffin or even Atlanta.”

  “I heard about it.”

  “Well, Sir, I’d like to go, if you could spare the money to send me.”

  “You know there’s nothin’ to spare, boy!” Henry thundered. “Everything I had was Confederate, and Confederate’s gone bust now. Be lucky to find enough to pay the taxes on the place this year. Where do you suppose I’ll get money for a luxury like school?”

  “But school’s not a luxury, Pa! I need my schoolin’, if I aim to be a doctor like Uncle John one day. I need to get my education . . .”

  “You need to learn to work harder, and earn what you get in life. I haven’t noticed you puttin’ out much effort to help around here. Looks to me like you spend most of your time ridin’ off to go shootin’.”

  “I do my chores, Pa. I help take care of Ma, too. And you’ve got the darkies to do the field work . . .”

  “Don’t you listen to anything I say, boy? We haven’t got any darkies anymore! Half the hands have run off to join the Yanks, the rest want me to pay them royal wages for their work. Pay them! Hell, I’ve paid for them over and over again already, buyin’ them off the auction block, givin’ them homes and clothes, feedin’ them. And where am I supposed to get the money to pay them with? Between the cost of seed and this damn winter that won’t break . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” John Henry said quietly, trying to assuage his father’s growing anger. “I didn’t know . . .”

  “What you don’t know could fill a book, boy! Now pour me another drink. This one’s not makin’ a dent.”

  But there was no more whiskey to be poured. His father had already drunk the last of what was left in the bottle, and John Henry felt a wave of dread come over him. Henry was angry enough already without learning that his own son had been stealing from him.

  “There . . . isn’t anymore, Pa,” he muttered, not daring to look his father in the face. “I reckon you’ve already drunk it all.”

  “Hell if I did,” Henry said, his steely eyes narrowing. “I know how much I drink, and how long the liquor will last. I had enough ‘till next month, unless someone’s been sharin’ it with me . . .”

  But before his father could make the accusation that would lead to a beating, a gentle voice spoke from the bedroom doorway.

  “Someone has been sharin’ it with you, Henry,” Alice Jane whispered hoarsely as she steadied herself with one hand on the doorframe, her white nightdress draping around her like a shroud. “I’ve been drinkin’ a little, now and then, to help with the pain. You needn’t take on after John Henry about it.”

  “You?” Henry asked, his dark brows lifting in surprise. “I’ve never known you to touch a drop of liquor in your life.”

  “My brother James suggested it,” she said. “Shall I write to him that you disapprove?”

  “James told you to drink?”

  “Yes,” she said, and John Henry was surprised by how coolly she could lie. He was sure she had never touched a drop of the whiskey herself, and was only saying so to protect him from his father’s wrath. “Now what’s all this fussin’ that woke me? Surely a little missin’ liquor can’t have made you so angry, Henry.”

  “It’s my fault, Ma,” John Henry said quickly. “I just asked if I could go study at the new school in town. I didn’t know that things were so hard around here.”

  “Spoiled, that’s what he is,” Henry said. “Thinks the world comes on a golden platter. That’s your doin’, Alice Jane, yours and your sisters’ for dotin’ on him all the time. Thinks the world owes him everything.”

  “You’re right, of
course, dear,” she agreed. “We do dote on him over much. But that’s because he’s the only child. You know I would have been thankful for more children, if the Lord had seen fit to bless us. Is this new school so very expensive?”

  “Everything’s expensive these days,” Henry replied, but his hot temper seemed to be cooling some in his wife’s gentle presence.

  “But surely we can find the money somewhere,” Alice Jane said. “You know how well he always did in school.” Then she added in measured tones: “You know how I feel about his education, Henry. If I leave him nothin’ else, I want to leave him educated, as a gentleman’s son should be. I want to know I did the best by him, when I am gone . . .”

  When I am gone, John Henry’s thoughts echoed silently, surprised to hear his mother allude to her own mortality. For though the family all knew now that she was indeed dying of the consumption, the sad truth of it was never mentioned aloud. But now she was using her own illness to fight for his happiness.

  Henry sighed as though unaccustomed to acquiescing. “All right, Alice Jane, if that’s what you want. I’ll scrape the tuition together somehow, if I have to sell off some of the farm to do it. God knows, the land’s not worth much to me these days, anyhow, without enough hands to work it. Hell, maybe I’ll even hire myself out to the Freedmen’s Bureau. I hear the government is lookin’ for local agents, now the occupation is over.” Then he turned his gaze, cool as blue steel, on John Henry. “But I’ll expect you to prove yourself deservin’ of the honor, boy. I want to see top marks in every subject, and perfect attendance as well. No use joinin’ the battle unless you plan to fight to the end.” Then his gaze shifted to the old sword that hung over the fireplace, the sword great-grandfather Burroughs had used in the Revolutionary War, and he sighed again.

  “I had hoped you might follow me into the military one day,” he said, “fight for your country like your forebears did. But I don’t reckon there’ll be much call for Southern soldiers anymore.” And as he spoke, there was such sadness in his voice, such wistfulness for those glory days gone by, that John Henry felt a pang of remorse.