Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  John Henry’s mind was reeling, his ear ringing from the blow of Mattie’s hand. She was right to slap him. He would have been disappointed in her if she hadn’t, after he’d forced himself on her like that. But for a fleeting moment she had leaned up toward him, and almost kissed him back. He knew it and she knew it, and that was all that mattered.

  Then he smiled to himself. He’d just kissed two girls in one night.

  He left Jonesboro two days later, taking the first train headed south, going home to face his father and the Freedmen’s Bureau. He made his polite apologies to Mattie, standing under the covered platform at the depot waiting for the train, and she nodded her forgiveness. She understood, of course, that he had been distraught over his father’s letter, and not at all himself. But when she raised her eyes to say good-bye, there was a spark of acknowledgment there. They were neither one of them children anymore. His kiss had changed all of that forever.

  Henry met him at the depot in Valdosta with stern admonitions about staying out of political trouble, but John Henry had no intention of getting involved in that kind of business again. The Cause was truly lost when a loyal Confederate like himself could get sent away by his own folks.

  “‘Course, you won’t have much time to get into trouble nowadays, anyhow,” Henry commented as he loaded John Henry’s luggage into the wagon for the short ride home to the house on Savannah Street. “You’ll be workin’ after school every day now. I’ve got you a position in town.”

  “What are you talkin’ about, Pa?” John Henry asked, bewildered, though he should have been accustomed to the way his father liked springing things on him suddenly. “What kind of position? Doin’ what?”

  “Workin’ with Dr. Lucian Frink, the new dentist just moved down here from Jasper. You know how we’ve been tryin’ to get a dentist to come to Valdosta for some time now. I guess the Institute finally attracted one, with all these new families movin’ into town to enroll their children. I reckon you’d rather work for one of the medical doctors since that’s the career you’re aimin’ at, but Dr. Frink’s the one who needed help. His office is right next door to my store, so I know you’ll be punctual.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Pa. I hadn’t expected . . .”

  “You hadn’t expected to work? Well, it’s about time you started to pay your own way in life. I’m doin’ better than I have in years, but that doesn’t mean I can afford to send you to medical college. You’ll have to put aside a pretty penny to pay your tuition, if you do manage to get yourself accepted.”

  “I meant that I hadn’t expected you to find a job for me. I’m obliged, that’s all.”

  “Damn right, you’re obliged. If it hadn’t been for my handlin’ your trouble about the Courthouse, you’d have spent the summer in military prison like your friends. But don’t think I’ll come to your rescue like that again. You get yourself in another fix with the law, John Henry, you’re on your own. I can’t afford to risk my own good name mixin’ in your misdoings. Next time . . .”

  “There won’t be a next time, Pa,” John Henry assured him. “I’m through with all that, I promise. All I want to do is finish school and get on with my life.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Now straighten your collar and make yourself presentable. Your mother is eager to see you, after all this time you’ve been gone.”

  “My mother?” For a fleeting moment his heart rose. Then his mind washed the pleasant impossibility away and he said heavily: “You mean Rachel.”

  “I mean my wife. And your stepmother, though you’ve never made much of an effort to make her feel like either one. She’s a good woman, John Henry, and wants to be a good mother to you, if you’d let her. She’s been cookin’ all day, gettin’ ready for your homecoming, and I expect you to behave with proper gratitude.”

  “Yessir,” John Henry said, as the wagon turned off the dirt road and into the picket-fenced yard where Rachel had planted rows of flowers along the walk. Then, under his breath so his father wouldn’t hear the sting of angry sarcasm in his voice, he added: “I’ll behave just as politely as she deserves.”

  Things in the Holliday home were as unchanged as if John Henry had never gotten into trouble and gone away at all. Henry was still so busy with his business of carriage dealing and farming that he had little time for his son. Rachel was still intent on giving Henry a new heir, and spent her days making baby clothes that would probably never be worn, the way she kept conceiving and miscarrying one pregnancy after another. And even that was a constant reminder to John Henry of the fleeting nature of life and loyalty as his father participated lustily in Rachel’s baby-making plans. Did it never occur to them that he could hear everything they were doing in their bedroom right across the hallway from his? Did they not realize that he was near eighteen-years-old now, and just hearing them made him angry and anxious all at once? To try and drown out the sound of them, he even brought the young housemaid into his own bedroom a time or two—a thing he never would have done with a white girl, of course, but Lizzie was Mulatto, and until the Emancipation had been the Holliday’s bought and paid for slave, and that made any immorality more acceptable. But once he had her there he found he didn’t really want her after all, and he sent her back to her loft room confused and complaining that Mr. John Henry sure did act peculiar sometimes. He knew he wasn’t peculiar, though. It was just that he wanted Mattie, the way his father had Rachel, and he was sure that until he had her, nothing else would do.

  It was a blessed relief to have to leave the house every morning, crossing the dirt road and the railroad tracks and walking up the hill to school for his final year of studies at the Valdosta Institute. He threw himself headlong into academics, excelling at every subject and finding that science and philosophy seemed to interest him the most. And as always, there were history and mathematics, composition and recitation, the long lines of literature to be memorized, the Latin phrases to translate and conjugate. But while others complained that Professor Varnedoe had never been as demanding as he was that final year, John Henry enjoyed the work and the security of school. The sameness of the school days, the routine of the school weeks, gave him a certain comfort in the chaos of his family life.

  It was easier to attend to his studies, of course, with his friends all gone away. Willie Pendleton and Constantia Bessant had already graduated. Sam Griffin and the rest of the Vigilantes were out of prison and scattered to the homes of faraway relatives. And while John Henry still felt guilty that he had not been made to pay the price for recklessness as they had, he appreciated his freedom enough to keep quiet and behave himself. Besides, high marks would buy his ticket out of Valdosta forever, if his plans worked out. For while he had long wanted to follow in his Uncle John Holliday’s footsteps and become a medical doctor, his after-school job with Dr. Lucian Frink had widened his view of the possibilities before him. Medicine was all well and good, but John Henry found that the dental work performed by Dr. Frink fascinated him even more.

  Dr. Frink was the first full-time dentist John Henry had ever known, as most small-town dental work was done by physicians who pulled teeth as part of their surgical services, the way Uncle John had done back in Fayetteville. But as a graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and a specialist in dentistry, Dr. Frink’s work went far beyond just pulling teeth. There were decayed cavities to be cleaned out and filled with sheets of gold foil beaten paper-thin. There were crown restorations made of porcelain and gold fused together to look like real tooth enamel. There were artificial teeth carved out of ivory and set into bases of gold or vulcanized rubber. And the instruments the dentist used—forceps, turnkeys, excavators, pluggers, burnishers, burrs—were artists’ tools for a profession that was as much art as science, and one that John Henry’s talented hands longed to try. He had always been good at whittling, he told the dentist, and added without boasting that he was the fastest boy around when it came to draw and fire, with eyes so keen he could spot a rabbit running through
the woods a hundred yards off. So when Dr. Frink smiled and said he seemed a natural for dentistry and ought to think about applying to the College of Dental Surgery himself, John Henry promised to give it some thought.

  He thought about it, all right, through the long days at school and the even longer nights at home, and by the time graduation came, he had his mind all made up. With letters of recommendation from Dr. Frink and Professor Varnedoe, and with copies of his excellent grades from the Valdosta Institute, John Henry was all ready to apply to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. The only thing he needed was a promise from his father that Henry would help him pay the cost of the tuition—an exorbitant $100 per session.

  It was the money that caught him up. Though Henry’s business ventures were booming, he said flatly that he could not afford to send his son so far away for schooling. The Medical College at Augusta would have been one thing, but paying for the trips to Philadelphia and back and arranging for rooming in that expensive Northern city was quite another.

  “Augusta was good enough for your Uncle John,” Henry pronounced. “And it’ll be damn good enough for you, as well.”

  Henry sat in the parlor, smoking his after-supper cigar and reading the paper out of Savannah, and being as dogmatic as ever. John Henry had long since stopped expecting Rachel to curb his father’s swearing and smoking, the way Alice Jane had always tried to do. Rachel didn’t seem to mind that the house was filled with blue smoke and blue language whenever Henry was around, though his son didn’t dare emulate him. John Henry was still expected to keep a civil tongue and a cool temper, though cursing seemed more appropriate at the moment.

  “The Medical College doesn’t teach restorative dentistry,” John Henry explained, trying for a voice balanced between instruction and supplication. “They teach extraction as part of the surgical curriculum. You can ask Uncle John about it if you don’t believe me.”

  “Believin’ you is beside the point,” Henry said, taking a slow draw on his cigar. “Payin’ for your expensive tastes is more like it. If you’ll recall, I already sold off considerable land to pay your way through the Institute. Not to mention the money I paid into that bond to get your friends out of prison. Haven’t seen much gratitude for any of that.”

  “I am grateful, Pa. Didn’t I do well, as you told me to? I graduated top of my class, didn’t I?” How Henry could always pull him away from the conversation at hand, make him feel so young and defenseless . . .

  “Looks to me like you could learn what you need just by workin’ for Dr. Frink,” Henry went on, “and save me the cost of the schooling entirely. Surely he could train you good enough.”

  “He can train me in some things, and he’ll have to, even if—even when,” he corrected himself, “I go off to school. Dr. Frink will be my preceptor; the Dental College requires them. I’ll work with him during the summer, learning clinical skills. But there’s so much more that I need to know—chemistry, anatomy, physiology, metallurgy—it’s a whole new field, Pa, a whole new world . . .”

  “You always were a dreamer,” Henry said flatly. “Just like your Ma . . .”

  “Ma would have wanted me to go,” he said quickly, taking the rare moment of reflection that Henry had offered. “You know what store she set in education. You know how much she always admired Uncle John . . .”

  It was the wrong thing to say, John Henry realized as he watched Henry’s expression change in the blink of a cold blue eye. Henry’s words came out with a hiss and a cloud of smoke. “Yes, she always did admire your Uncle John, more than she should have.”

  John Henry felt his face flush. “You forget yourself, Pa,” he said with emotion straining his voice. “My mother’s memory deserves better.” And my mother deserved better than you, he wanted to add, but kept himself from it. Angering his father would only keep him further from his goal and keep him home in Valdosta. If he wanted to leave his father’s home behind, he needed to leave well enough alone. “I can come back every summer to work with Dr. Frink and earn a little money as well. The course work runs September until June, with a break until the fall . . .”

  “Not this fall,” Henry said. “This fall your cousin George Henry is gettin’ married, up in Atlanta. I’ve been thinkin’ of takin’ you and Rachel along, makin’ it a family reunion of sorts.”

  Henry hadn’t said no, exactly, though he still hadn’t said yes, and John Henry knew that the conversation was over for the time being. If he wanted to go in his father’s good graces and with some of his father’s good money, he’d have to abide by Henry’s suddenly announced decision. No dental school this fall, or next spring either—then he realized what his father had said.

  “A family reunion? Who all will be there?”

  “Everybody, sounds like. Your Aunt Martha Holliday and Colonel Johnson and their boys, your Aunt Rebecca and that new husband of hers, Willie McCoin, and her boys. Glad Rebecca got herself married again, after your uncle John Jones got killed in the war, or we’d be supportin’ her, too . . .”

  “And Uncle Rob?” John Henry asked impatiently. “Is Uncle Rob comin’? Is his family comin’, too?”

  “I expect so, seein’ as Jonesboro is just down the railroad from Atlanta. It’s gonna be a big affair, so I hear. George is marryin’ a real society girl, granddaughter of one of the biggest planters up in Tennessee. Old money. Not that old money is worth much anymore . . .”

  Henry was about to start on another of his lectures on the economic decline of the South, so John Henry quickly excused himself from the room. If dental school had to wait, at least he had something else to look forward to. For if Uncle Rob were bringing his whole family to the wedding, then surely Cousin Mattie would be there, too. And along with his plans for dental school, John Henry had some even more personal plans, plans that he hoped Mattie would find pleasing.

  He lay awake in bed half the night thinking how fine the fall was going to be after all.

  Chapter Seven

  ATLANTA, 1869

  JOHN STILES HOLLIDAY HAD BEEN ONE OF THE WEALTHIEST MEN IN Fayetteville before the War came to Georgia and Fayette County became a foraging point for Yankee and Confederate troops alike. The Yanks burned most of the homes in the county, the Rebs stole most of the farm produce to feed the soldiers, and Fayette County was left nearly destitute. Then Reconstruction came, and times turned so hard that the County had to send as far off as Kentucky to buy corn and bacon for the hungry people of Fayetteville. And if the people had nothing to eat, they had less to share with the town doctor, who had taken his pay for services in cash and kind before then. Even his partnership in a general store didn’t bring in enough money to support the doctor’s household, so with no regular source of income and his own family of five and a houseful of servants to provide for, the good doctor had no choice but to move away, looking for better times.

  Atlanta was having better times—boom times compared to Fayetteville, and soon after moving his family to the city, Dr. Holliday found himself gainfully employed again. To supplement his practice earnings he invested in another dry goods partnership, Tidwell and Holliday, and before long the dry goods store was making more money than the medical practice ever had, and Dr. John Stiles Holliday found himself in the unusual position of being a prosperous grocer with a medical degree. But that was Atlanta in the Reconstruction—fortunes were being made every day by people who didn’t mind changing with the times.

  After three years in their new home, the Hollidays were well on their way to becoming one of the leading families in the city. Mrs. Holliday was a pillar of the Presbyterian Church. The Holliday boys attended school at fine academies on Peachtree Street. And when the eldest son, George Henry, announced his engagement to Miss Mary Elizabeth Wright, daughter of another of Atlanta’s new entrepreneurs, the event was hailed as one of the highlights of the Atlanta social season. Guests from all over Georgia were invited to attend—including the Holliday’s cousins from all the way down in Valdosta.

  John Hen
ry had been to Atlanta a time or two before, traveling up from Griffin with his father on business before the war. But the city he had known then, and the city he saw now as the train pulled into town that November afternoon, had nothing in common but a name. The old Atlanta had been a busy village at the terminus of two railroads. The new Atlanta was a booming metropolis, all hustle and bustle and filled with the noise of construction going up everywhere. The sound of Atlanta, as John Henry would ever after remember it, was the sound of hammer and nail, chisel and saw.

  After Sherman’s siege had destroyed half the city, Atlanta had lost little time in starting to rebuild. Now, a short four years since the war had ended, Atlanta was already stretching past its three-mile town limits and boasting a population of over 20,000. There were three-hundred merchants in town, fifty liquor stores, thirty butchers, ten wagon yards, and more hacks and drays than John Henry had ever seen in one place before. Atlanta, like the mythical Phoenix bird, was rising up from its own ashes to spread its wings again.

  “Ain’t it grand!” Rachel Martin Holliday exclaimed, putting one gloved hand to her heart as if to still its racing as they stepped down from the train at the Atlanta Depot. “I ain’t never been to the city before—any city before. I figured Valdosta was a big place, ‘til now. But oh! Don’t Atlanta just beat it all!”

  “I doubt Atlanta ‘beats it all’,” John Henry replied with a superior tone. “There’s lots of cities bigger than this. Philadelphia for instance, that’s where Dr. Frink studied dentistry. Philadelphia would make Atlanta look like a farm town, I bet,” though in truth he was as awe-struck by the city as she was. But he wouldn’t let Rachel know that.

  “I reckon you’re right,” Rachel said, then she grinned. “Don’t your father look handsome in that new top hat of his? He didn’t want to buy it, but I made him do it. I said if he was gonna make a visit to the city, he ought to look citified. Don’t he look dapper?” Then she waved her hand and called out above the raucous crowd to where Henry was paying for a cab: “Hey there, Major Holliday! I sure do like that hat your wearin’!”