Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “Gunpowder!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “Under the stand! There’s a keg of gunpowder about to blow down there!”

  The sudden panic surprised him, as his warning was answered by screams from the onlookers and a near riot on the speaker’s stand. The guards around the steps were pushed aside as a flood of politicians shoved each other down from the stand, stepping on anything and anyone in their way. John Henry only hoped the screaming and the running had made Jack Calhoun reconsider his suicidal plans.

  But as he tried to push his way through the confused guards to find Jack, the black soldier grabbed ahold of him and held him back. “Not so fast. The commander will be wantin’ to speak to you, Reb boy who knows so much. I reckon I was right in keepin’ my eyes on you.”

  John Henry’s own eyes were fixed on the crawlspace under the steps, where two more guards were pulling another young man out from the shadows.

  “Jack!” he called out, unable to free himself from the soldier’s grasp enough to manage a wave. “Jack Calhoun! You’re still alive!”

  But there was no answering greeting, only the dull stare of a young man whose death wish had been dashed like the rest of his hopes. Jack was alive, all right, and it was John Henry’s fault that he was.

  “Friends, huh?” the black soldier said, smiling. “Well, I guess you can have some company when you hang. You know they hang traitors, don’t you? String ‘em up like this . . .” and to demonstrate, he yanked on John Henry so hard his feet came right up off the ground and he yelped out in pain.

  Then a voice spoke from behind them, cool and commanding.

  “That’ll do. You can put him down now.”

  And to his relief, John Henry looked up into the steely eyes of his father, come to rescue him.

  “And why should I do that?” the soldier asked, putting John Henry down but keeping a strong hand on him. “Don’t look to me like you got any say around here anymore, Major Holliday. You been put out as Freedmen’s Agent. And this boy’s goin’ up to talk to the Commander, tell him what he knows.”

  For all his commanding presence, Henry Holliday was still no physical match for the soldier, big and heavy-muscled as a plowhand. But what Henry lacked in stature he more than made up for in boldness.

  “Well then, we’ll just go together to see the Commander,” he said with a nod. “And I’m sure he’ll be interested in hearin’ how you’ve been mistreatin’ the boy who just saved his life. Probably give you jail time yourself for your rough handlin’ of him, or run you out of the service altogether. ‘Course there’s always plenty of work to be done back in the fields where you come from. I’m sure I can manage to find you a good position around the County somewhere.”

  For a moment the soldier’s big black hand tightened on John Henry’s shoulder, and he winced in pain again. Then the man loosened his grasp a little.

  “What do you mean, the boy who saved his life? This boy’s been in on somethin’ for a while. I know it.”

  Then to John Henry’s astonishment, he heard his father let out a laugh.

  “What you know ain’t worth listenin’ to!” Henry said, laughing again, loud and robust like John Henry had never in life heard him do. Henry rarely even smiled; he never laughed.

  But he was laughing now, so hard that there were tears coming down his face.

  “Big Nigger like you gets a nice uniform, thinks that makes him smart! Of course my boy’s been up to somethin’! He’s been workin’ for the commander for months now, doin’ errands and such. You think just because the Yanks freed the slaves, they know how to get along without someone doin’ their business for them? Why, without John Henry and boys like you, your commander couldn’t take himself a decent piss. In fact, the commander was just tellin’ me as much the other day, glad he’s got a big buck like you waitin’ on him hand and foot . . .”

  It was all a lie, of course, and John Henry knew it. But the soldier didn’t know as much as he thought he did, least of all the cunning of a Confederate officer who was trying to save his son.

  “You been talkin’ with the commander?” the soldier asked, wavering a little.

  “Just ‘cause Washington put me out as Agent don’t mean the Commander’s done with me,” Henry replied, lying again. “So let’s go, boy. Let’s see what your Commander has to say about all this.”

  If the soldier had been a Northern colored, or even a Southern city colored, he might have held his position. But he was a plantation colored, born and bred, and used to being ordered around by arrogant Southern planters.

  “I say let’s go, boy,” Henry said again, his voice hanging on the word boy. “Or let my son go and get along about your business.”

  There was nothing the soldier could do under the circumstances but release John Henry and walk away, broad shoulders hunched like he’d been horse whipped.

  “Oh, Pa!” John Henry said, turning back toward his father with a heart torn between relief and amazement. “You saved me . . .”

  But he’d barely gotten the words out when Henry’s hand came down across his face, slapping him so hard it nearly knocked him over.

  “Don’t you ever shame me again, d’hear me? Don’t you ever make me grovel for you again! Bad enough you waste all your time down at Sam Griffin’s place, drinkin’ and such, but goin’ in on this fool business . . .”

  “It wasn’t fool business, Pa. We were Vigilantes . . .” The word had seemed so adventurous, until now.

  “Gunpowder in the hands of children looks like fool business to me. And it don’t make no difference to me who got it, or why, so save the excuses. You’re just damn lucky I happened to be nearby or you’d be headed off to jail by now like your fool friends. I expect Sam Griffin was in on this too, and Darnell’s boy Alex . . .”

  “Jail?” John Henry said, rubbing his aching jaw as he stared wide-eyed at his father. “They’re goin’ to jail?”

  “That’s what we do with law-breakers in this country. Just pray the commander turns them over to the civil authorities instead of lettin’ the military deal with them. It’s Martial Law, John Henry, and we’re still the enemy. Now get on home and make yourself useful. You’re done with those boys.”

  Henry was right about the boys being thrown into jail, and it didn’t take the Federals long to get them there. Once the unexploded powder keg was hauled out from under the Courthouse steps, bearing the mark of Griffin’s General Store, the soldiers knew right where to look for the rest of the conspirators. They made quick work of it and found Sam Griffin still at the store, waiting for his friends to return, along with Alex Darnell still holding his father’s horses out back for their getaway. By nightfall, all the boys had been rounded up and hustled off to the same dank jail cell from which they had once helped Dick Force to escape. All the boys except John Henry, whose father had gotten him off in the nick of time.

  So while his friends spent the night on the hard plank floor of the County jail, John Henry tossed and turned on his feather mattress. He deserved to be in jail with them; he almost wished he were. For though his father would surely mete out punishment for his misdeed, knowing his friends were suffering without him made him feel all the more guilty. Nothing Henry could do to him would be punishment enough to make up for his undeserved freedom. Even Henry’s open hand across his face hadn’t hurt all that much. Angry as his father had been, it was the most attention he had paid his son in longer than John Henry could remember.

  But the boys didn’t have to languish in jail for long. As soon as the commander turned them over to the civil authorities, the Sheriff took bond and set them free again, pending civil action. The Superior Court could deal with them when the calendar opened up some. Until then, the judge was busy with more important matters, like a neighborly disputation over a fence line and the theft of some prized chickens. The opinion of most of the good people of Valdosta was that the boys had meant no real harm since the keg had been found to have no fuse or train attached. Surely, they couldn’t have meant
to light it, only scare folks a little. And as it was, it was the coloreds in the community who were scared the most, fearing that the unlit gunpowder was a warning to them of what would happen if they dared to vote Republican in the upcoming election. Thanks to the gunpowder plot, there’d likely be a landslide victory for the Democratic-Conservative ticket, come Election Day. So all in all, things had come out fine, and the town turned its attention to other matters.

  But the Federals weren’t so easily distracted. Gunpowder under a speaker’s platform, exploded or not, was clearly an act of aggression. And since the speaker on the platform had been a United States official, a Registrar of Voting assigned by General Pope himself, the gunpowder plot was an act of treason as well. So once word got to General Meade in Atlanta that traitors to the United States of America had been set free by the local authorities, the boys were in worse trouble than before.

  The first John Henry heard of it was a banging on his bedroom door late one moonless night.

  “Get up and get dressed!” his father’s voice commanded.

  Even half-asleep, John Henry knew better than to disobey his father, and he rolled out of his rope-slung bed and reached for his clothes.

  “What’s goin’ on, Pa?” he said, opening his bedroom door and blinking in the light of the oil lamp his father held to light the dark hallway.

  “You’re goin’ to Jonesboro. Pack your things, and be quick about it.”

  “Jonesboro? But it’s the middle of the night! Why am I goin’ there?”

  “To save you from your own fool self,” Henry said. “Colonel Bessant’s in the parlor. He’s just got word that the Yankees are comin’, General Meade’s men. They’re plannin’ on takin’ your friends off to prison in Savannah to stand a military trial. So I’m gettin’ you out of town before they get here.”

  John Henry was wide-awake by now, but his father’s words still made no sense to him.

  “But why should I leave town?” he asked. “You got me off already. I didn’t even get arrested. What can the Yankees do to me?”

  “Plenty, if your friends decide to talk. ‘Cause arrested or not, you’re still as guilty as the rest of them. Now pack up. We haven’t got much time.”

  But John Henry had no desire to be leaving town just when things were getting hot again.

  “But Pa, what if Jack and the boys need my help? They’ll think I’m a coward, or worse, for runnin’ away . . .”

  “Runnin’ is what you should have done the first time you heard of this business. A boy’s got no place playin’ in a man’s work.”

  “I’m not a boy!” he said stubbornly. “I’m near seventeen-years-old now, nigh unto bein’ a man myself . . .”

  Henry cut him off with a cold glare.

  “Are you man enough to hang? For that’s what General Meade plans to do with those boys, once he’s finished tryin’ them. Treason’s a hangin’ crime, John Henry. You think you’re man enough for that?”

  The thought of his friends with their necks in a hanging noose made him feel so strangled himself that he couldn’t even speak an answer. But his heart was racing like a horse whipped to a lather. How could he leave when his friends might need him? What would they think of him when they found out he’d gone off and left them? And how could his father not understand that his place was with the Vigilantes, not away off in Jonesboro hiding out like some sissy boy?

  But he couldn’t disobey his father, so he did as he was told and packed his things, ready for the long ride to Jonesboro. And the only consolation he could find was that Mattie would be there, and she, at least, would understand.

  Chapter Six

  JONESBORO, 1868

  MATTIE HOLLIDAY HAD OTHER THINGS ON HER MIND THAT SUMMER, however, for Mattie had a beau, a young Confederate veteran from South Carolina whose wife had died during the bombing of Charleston and left him with a baby daughter to raise. Mattie hadn’t actually met him yet, but they had exchanged letters and he was hoping to come to Jonesboro to court her. Her father had known him during the War and said he was a fine man, and her mother was delighted that he too was Catholic—there were so few Catholic boys in Georgia. It seemed a match made in heaven to everyone except John Henry, who couldn’t believe that Mattie could be so disloyal.

  “You’re surely not serious about this, Mattie!” he said, as they walked home from town together one warm evening soon after his arrival. “You don’t even know him!”

  “My father knows him and, of course, I trust his judgment for me. And besides, I think it’s terribly romantic, the tragic young war hero and his motherless babe, saved from a life of desolation by true love come again. It fairly sweeps me off my feet!”

  “Well it sounds like dime novel nonsense to me!” John Henry said as he kicked at the dusty road in disgust. “Suppose he’s crippled from the War, with one arm and a big glass eye? He wouldn’t seem so romantic then, I bet!”

  Mattie looked up at his flushed face and laughed. “Why John Henry Holliday, I do believe you’re jealous!”

  He knew he was, but he couldn’t let her know that. “Don’t be stupid, Mattie. I just think you’re too young for this kind of talk. Next you’ll be thinkin’ of marryin’ this soldier.”

  “Well of course, silly, that’s why he wants to court me,” she said condescendingly. “I’m eighteen now, plenty old enough to marry. Why, my mother had a husband and two babies by the time she was my age!”

  How was it possible that Mattie had suddenly grown so much older? The year and a half between their ages stretched out like an eternity in his mind. “I just think that you ought to wait for awhile . . .” He shrugged, not knowing what else to say, but his heart went on, wait until I’m older and can ask for your hand . . .

  Mattie smiled at him with sympathy, the way she looked at her little sisters when they fell and bruised a knee. “Oh honey, I know we’ve always been best sweethearts, but that was just child’s play. I’m a woman now, with a woman’s heart, and I need a family of my own to love and care for. I wish you’d be happy for me.”

  And reflected in her shining eyes he saw himself the way Mattie saw him: just a tall, awkward boy who followed after her with loving eyes and silent longings. But his arms ached to hold her close and make her forget that soldier, make her forget anyone but him. There was a long silence between them, then Mattie slipped her hand into his and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

  “Why, John Henry, I think it’s sweet that you care for me so. I’m sure I’d be hurt if you weren’t a little jealous. Please don’t let this spoil our summer together. I’m so happy to have you here.”

  They walked on home, hand in hand as always, but he could still feel the touch of her lips on his face, and in his heart he heard the words that she had said when they were children together: “I love you, I always have, and I always will.”

  Mattie’s gentle rejection didn’t help his mood any that summer. He was still angry at his father for sending him away from home and confused by a world that made even less sense now than it had during the War. If the Cause were just, why weren’t they still fighting for it? And if it were unjust, why had they ever fought at all? He was at that idealistic age when everything needed an answer and all he seemed to have were questions—and his exile in Jonesboro wasn’t helping any. His father had told Uncle Rob to put him to work, so John Henry was given a job at the newly completed granite train depot doing menial tasks no one else wanted to do: raking the gravel rail bed, scrubbing the wood plank walks, hauling coal and water—hard physical labor that was surely beneath his station, but left him with little time or energy to misbehave. After a long day in the scorching summer sun he was ready for a good meal and a soft bed, but there was still more work to be done. The horse in the barn behind the house needed tending, the kitchen garden was growing tall and thick with weeds, and Aunt Mary Anne always had extra chores to be done as well. The work went on right past sundown, six days a week.

  On Sundays, there were family visits with relativ
es living out in the county—Aunt Martha Holliday who was married to wealthy Colonel Johnson and lived in a big house on a hill north of town, and Aunt Mary Anne’s uncle Phillip Fitzgerald who still lived on the old plantation south toward Lovejoy’s Station. John Henry sat quietly during those visits, dressed in his best wool suit, hot and uncomfortable in stuffy dark parlors, knowing he was the object of family talk—

  “You remember Cousin Henry Holliday’s boy, John Henry? He’s here visitin’ with Rob and Mary Anne for a while. His father had to send him here after that unfortunate trouble down in Valdosta . . .”

  “Well, we’ve sure never had any trouble like that in this family before. Must be somethin’ from that McKey side of his. You know how quiet his mother always was, and they do say still waters run deep . . .”

  Then the voices would drop to a whisper and he would feel himself turning red with embarrassment and anger. If he hadn’t been raised to be so polite he sure would set them all straight. Wasn’t anything wrong in what he’d done, nothing at all. Why, there were vigilantes in every Southern town, Jonesboro even, horseback riders coming through just before sunset, guns showing, warning those free Negroes to mind themselves. Just a little show of strength to keep things orderly. Well, wasn’t that what he’d done too? But they talked about it like he was some kind of outlaw.

  But worse than the way the family talked about him was the way Mattie talked incessantly about her soldier-beau. Was he really handsome or just good-looking? Was he as tall as Father? Were his eyes blue as Mother’s, or lighter, like John Henry’s? It was hardest of all to hear himself compared to the hated stranger. It didn’t matter one whit to him what the fellow was like, he was the enemy pure and simple, and Mattie was a traitor for caring about him. Hadn’t she promised to always be his sweetheart? Funny how fast always could end.

  It was hard to get away from Mattie’s soldier talk in a house that was filled with Hollidays clear up to the attic, the room he shared with little Jim Bob, the baby born to Aunt Mary Anne that Christmas in Valdosta. So sometimes at night when he thought everyone else had gone to sleep, he’d quietly climb around Jim Bob’s little bed and steal down the attic stair, past the room that Mattie shared with her sister Lucy, and go outside to sit alone in the darkness of the back porch. He liked the stillness of the night when all the sounds seemed close and clear—the music of the crickets, the low drone of the katydids in the trees, and far away, the lonely whistle of a train headed south from Atlanta. And out in the moonlit shadows, under the backyard trees, there rested those two heroes buried in the garden—strange companions in the silence.