Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  Chapter Fourteen

  ATLANTA, 1872

  HE WAS FEARFUL AT FIRST THAT ANNIE MIGHT SHARE HER SUSPICIONS with her cousin, but Mattie never seemed to waver in her affections or doubt John Henry’s affections for her. If anything, she seemed to favor him more than ever, smiling at him across the supper table, laughing at his stories, spending whole evenings willingly listening to him talk about his work at Dr. Ford’s dental office. And when she needed a ride to Mass on Sundays, it was John Henry she wanted to take her there, driving Uncle John’s runabout into town to the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

  So when a letter arrived for John Henry inviting him away from Atlanta to pay a visit to his father’s Mexican serving boy, Francisco Hidalgo, he was loathe to go. Surely, the birth of the Hidalgo’s new baby required nothing of him but a congratulatory letter in return, or perhaps a wire. It had been years since he’d seen Francisco, after all, making them barely even acquaintances anymore, though they’d lived in the same household years back. But Francisco’s letter was adamant: Please come to Jenkinsburg as soon as you can. I need to speak to you personally.

  Having Mattie say she’d miss him every day while he was gone almost made the trip worthwhile.

  He took the train south to Griffin on a bright November morning and hired a horse to take him the ten miles out to Jenkinsburg. The autumn had been unusually cool, the trees turning early from green to yellow and brown, and the ground was covered with a blanket of golden leaves that scattered across the road with every stride of the horse. Overhead, the sky was a brilliant, cloudless, perfect blue.

  Jenkinsburg wasn’t much more than a general store and a Baptist Church with a few farms scattered into the surrounding countryside. Francisco’s fields should have been laid fallow by now like his neighbors’ fields were, the neat rows of carrots and beans all harvested, the red dirt planted in a cover crop of winter grass. But as John Henry reined the horse to a stop in front of the place, he saw that there were still too many plants in the ground, the cornstalks dried and bending over, the greens going to flower. He’d heard that Francisco had been ill, and the place showed his lack of care.

  “Rueben and Dickens have been tryin’ to keep things up,” Martha Hidalgo explained as she met John Henry at the door and ushered him into the cabin that faced the farmland. “We even kept John and Finney out of school this fall to help, but it’s awful hard to get all the work done. We’ll have to hire a man next year, I fear, and where we’ll get the money, I don’t know.”

  “Francisco wrote that he needed me to come right away?” John Henry questioned. Considering Martha’s comments, he was afraid that what Francisco wanted was an extra hand on the farm. He’d left Valdosta to get away from one farm; he wasn’t about to start plowing and planting on another one.

  Martha nodded. “We appreciate you comin’ so fast. Francisco’s got it in his head to take care of family business all of the sudden. Guess he’s had too much time to think, bein’ in bed so much this fall. You know how he is, though, always has to be doin’ somethin’.”

  “Is he still feelin’ poorly?”

  “You don’t know?” Martha said. “It’s the consumption. He’s likely had it for years, so the doctor says.” Then she stooped to a cradle on the brick hearth of the kitchen fire, gently pulling back the blanket to show a sleeping infant. “This is our newest, Exa Elon. Francisco named her after his sister he hasn’t seen since he was orphaned in the Mexican War. But I call her Nita. She’ll be one month tomorrow.”

  John Henry bent to look at the child, and without thinking, reached a hand down to touch its honey-colored face. Then the baby opened its eyes and looked up at him, and for a moment he had the eerie feeling that the innocent child was somehow wiser than he was.

  Martha took the child from the cradle. “She’ll be wantin’ to nurse, now she’s awake. Why don’t you go on over to the Springs and see Francisco?”

  “The Springs?”

  “The Indian sulfur springs, out past Jackson. He’s been seein’ Doc Whitehead over there. Rueben drives him over a couple of times a week, so he can do the baths and the water. The Indians used to say the spring water could cure anything. ‘Course, they believed it was healin’ spirits that did it, not the sulfur.” Then she looked down lovingly into her baby’s face. “The Indians wouldn’t let children nearby, for fear of the cryin’ scarin’ the healin’ spirits away. Savage superstition. There’s nothin’ more healin’ than havin’ a new baby around.” Then she looked back up at John Henry, and this time there were tears in her eyes. “Go on over to the Springs and see Francisco. He has somethin’ he needs to talk to you about.”

  It was five miles from Jenkinsburg to the county seat of Jackson and another five miles from there to Indian Springs, and although the weather was still lovely for riding, John Henry’s thoughts were no longer on the pleasant Autumn day. Francisco was dying the slow death of consumption and leaving behind eight children and a wife who was already mourning for him. If they were having trouble making ends meet now, things were only going to get harder after he passed on.

  Beyond Jackson, the road narrowed and led down into the wooded Ocmulgee River bottoms where the streams the Indians called the Abbothlacoosta and Hopoethlelohola converged from two directions to form Big Sandy Creek and where cold sulfur springs rose up right out of the ground. By the time the half-breed Chief William McIntosh built a hotel there, the Indian Springs were already famous. “The Saratoga of the South,” folks called the place, and visitors came from hundreds of miles around to try the healing Indian waters. But the Indians were gone now, driven out on their Trail of Tears to the Oklahoma Territory, and only McIntosh’s Indian Springs resort remained in what was now a white man’s town.

  John Henry found Doc Whitehead’s shingle hanging just past the Wigwam Hotel, and he tied his horse to a rack outside the doctor’s office and pulled on the bell chain. A moment later, the door was opened by a gentleman in dark trousers and shirtsleeves, a stethoscope hung around his neck.

  “Dr. Whitehead?” John Henry asked.

  “Yes,” the man replied. “Emergency or appointment?”

  “Neither,” John Henry replied. “I’m just lookin’ for someone, and hoped you might be able to help me. I believe he’s a patient of yours—Francisco Hidalgo?”

  “Hidalgo?” the doctor queried. “You mean E’dalgo? From over near Jenkinsburg?”

  So Francisco had changed the spelling of his name for something a little more sophisticated—and a little less Mexican, John Henry mused.

  “I reckon that’s him. His wife said he was here at the Springs, takin’ the treatment. Do you know where I might find him?”

  “Same place he always goes,” the doctor replied. “He’ll be down at the bath house, soakin’ in the sulfur water.”

  “I hear it can cure the consumption,” John Henry said.

  “I’ve seen some cures come out of the Springs. Even seen some when the patient was farther gone than Mr. E’dalgo.”

  “And what about Francisco?” John Henry asked. “Is the water doin’ him any good?”

  Of course it was improper for him to even ask such a question, considering the confidence between doctor and patient. But the grief in Martha Hidalgo’s face that morning made him ask anyway.

  “Are you family?” the doctor inquired.

  “I reckon you might call us kin.”

  “Then you should know that I don’t hold too much hope. Mr. E’dalgo is far along, I’m afraid. Has been for some time. There must have been symptoms for years, of course, but they can be deceiving: the lack of appetite, the loss of weight, the tiredness, the night sweats, the chronic cough. But many illnesses cause the same conditions. It’s only when the lung tissue begins to come up that we know for sure, and then it’s really too far gone. As I said, Mr. E’dalgo is very ill. He’s a good man, a good father. Hard to see his family left alone like that. I’m glad to hear he’s got kin. They’ll be needin’ you.”

  John
Henry wanted to answer that he was only kin by association and not really responsible for Francisco’s dependent family, but the sympathy in the doctor’s face struck a guilty chord within him. If he wasn’t family to Francisco, who was?

  He left the doctor’s office feeling as heavy-hearted as if it were his own life that was ending too soon, instead of that of a Mexican orphan boy who was lucky he’d had any kind of life at all.

  The bathhouse stood on the high ground above the rocky shoals of the Big Sandy, close by the Indian Springs. The place was easy to find; you just followed the steam and the stench. If the sulfur water smelled of rotten eggs when it was cold, it smelled even worse when it was pumped from the springs to the bathhouse and heated over the big wood fires. It was no wonder the Indians had thought the Springs to be possessed by spirits—with the steam rising up from the roof of the bath house and the awful smell of the heated sulfur water, there was something almost supernatural about the place.

  Francisco was in the bathhouse, as the doctor had said he would be, reclining on a wicker settee and wrapped from head to toe in Turkish towels.

  “It’s the treatment,” he whispered hoarsely. “Pull up a chair.”

  John Henry took a seat on a wicker stool and pulled off his hat, stunned speechless at the change that had come over Francisco. He was only a shadow of his sturdy brown-skinned former self, a thin cadaver of a man with dark eyes sunk deep into an ashen face. Swathed as he was in toweling, he looked like he was already wrapped for the grave.

  “They have me soak in the tubs until I can’t stand the heat,” Francisco said, pausing to catch his breath, “then they wrap me up like this and let me sweat awhile. Supposed to bring out the poisons. Feels like they’re draining the life right out of me.”

  John Henry took a moment before replying, unsure of what to say. “I saw your new baby,” he remarked at last.

  Francisco managed a weak smile. “Seems strange to have life coming and going all at once, doesn’t it? But life is milagro,” he said, lapsing into the Spanish he’d spoken as a boy.

  “A miracle?” John Henry said, translating without thinking. He’d learned a little Spanish from Francisco when he was growing up, and some of it still came back to him.

  “Who knows? Maybe I will live long enough to see this new one grow old,” Francisco said, coughing weakly as he shifted on his settee, trying to sit up. “It’s about the baby that I needed to talk to you—the baby and the other children, as well.” His words came slowly, as he paused to take careful breaths. “Cisco Junior is seventeen now, near a man. But the others—Rueben, Dicken, John, Finney. They need guidance still. They need a strong hand. Maggie is just a toddler. And the baby . . .”

  “Martha seems like a good mother,” John Henry said, hoping the reminder would somehow soothe Francisco’s worries. But his words seemed to have the opposite effect, making Francisco speak too quickly again.

  “Martha has too much on her. I should be home seeing to the farm instead of here.” He coughed again, then fell back against the settee, moaning.

  “Shall I get the attendant?” John Henry asked, but Francisco shook his head and went on.

  “No, it’s you I need right now,” he said.

  “But what can I do? I’m no medical doctor.”

  “Not for me,” Francisco said painfully, “for them. For the children. For Martha. I need you to act as guardian for me, as your father would if he were closer. But Valdosta’s too far away, should they need something. You are just up in Atlanta . . .”

  “But I’m too young to be a guardian!” John Henry protested. “I’ve just turned twenty-one myself!”

  “And your father wasn’t much older when he took me out of Mexico. But he raised me anyway, as best a bachelor could do. Of all the things he did in that War, that was the bravest.”

  “Brave?” John Henry asked. “What was so brave about that?”

  He stopped himself before saying anymore, though the words were waiting to be said: what was so brave about Henry Holliday bringing an orphan boy back from the War? He was used to having slaves take care of him, after all. Now he had a Mexican orphan boy as a valet. There wasn’t all that much difference. And yearn as Francisco might to be a member of the Holliday family, he’d never been more than household help. But John Henry couldn’t say all that, not now when Francisco was so sick.

  “There wasn’t anything brave about takin’ you in, Francisco,” he said carefully. “You worked plenty hard for your keep. My father was lucky he found you. But I still wouldn’t be all that good as a guardian. Atlanta’s a half-day’s train ride away, and I have my work at Dr. Ford’s office . . .”

  But his easy words froze when Francisco reached out one thin, cold hand to his, like a touch from the grave.

  “Hermano. . .” he said, the Spanish word coming out in a broken whisper.

  “What?”

  “Hermano,” Francisco said again. “I know I’m not blood relation to you, but you’re the closest thing I have to a brother, John Henry. And as my brother, I beg of you, please don’t let my children be orphaned as I once was . . .”

  There was such pleading in his whispered words that John Henry could not deny them.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he said heavily.

  “Watch over my family for me when I die, as your father would have if he were here. Take care of them as he once took care of me . . .”

  “But Martha must have kin. Surely there’s some real family close by?”

  It was a reasonable enough question, but somehow it brought a new look of pain to Francisco’s face, and John Henry regretted the words.

  “She has family,” Francisco replied heavily, “but you are all I have close. You are all I have to stand in stead for their father . . .”

  “All right,” John Henry said with quiet resignation. “All right.” Francisco lay back on the settee, a faint smile on his pale lips. “De tal palo, tal astilla,” he said, lapsing into Spanish. “Like father, like son . . .”

  Francisco’s gratitude did nothing to lighten the weight on John Henry’s heart, for the last thing he wanted to be was anything like his father. He was enough like his father, however, to take care of business matters. So before his return to Atlanta, he stopped by the Spalding County Courthouse in Griffin to record the deed to his newly inherited property, still fearful that somehow Hyram Neil had beat him to it.

  The Courthouse stood across Broad Street from the railroad tracks, a solid building of red brick and white arched windows with iron-barred jail cells. John Henry remembered it well from his childhood days, when the Courthouse had seemed to him like a great red palace where all the important men of Griffin gathered: the cotton planters and cotton merchants, the slave brokers and mill owners, the bankers and railroad stockholders. And standing tall in the midst of them, his father was one of the most important men of all. Henry Holliday had been Clerk of the Spalding County Court back then, which gave him inside knowledge of all that was going on. He knew who was buying and selling property and for what profit, who was losing property to foreclosure, who might be willing to sell at a loss to avoid the embarrassment of a sheriff ’s sale. The great men curried his favor in hopes of gaining profitable information, and Henry used the favor to make connections that might one day win him real political office.

  Of course, all that was before the War, and now Henry Holliday’s political aspirations were confined to the smaller world of Valdosta. But his legacy, it seemed, had remained in Griffin.

  “Holliday?” the court clerk said, as John Henry handed him a copy of the deed paperwork, his father’s birthday gift to him that had come folded inside a letter reminding him of his duties as a guest in his Uncle John’s home.

  “That’s right. John Henry Holliday.”

  “Any relation to Henry Holliday?” the court clerk asked, peering at him through wire-rimmed glasses.

  “He’s my father.”

  The man looked him up and down and shook his head. “I
don’t recall Henry Holliday having a boy as big as you.”

  “I’ve grown now, Sir,” he replied. “I’ve come of age.”

  “I reckon. I served with Henry Holliday in the War with Mexico, you know—Fannin’s Avengers. Fought under Winfield Scott after he took over from Zach Taylor. Too bad Scott went Yankee. He was a helluva commander.”

  John Henry had heard it all before, a hundred times at least.

  “Will this copyin’ take long?” he asked, as the clerk went about his slow labor of transcribing each long legal sentence into the heavy deed book.

  “Only if you want it done right,” the man replied without looking up. “You don’t want to have me make a mistake and find yourself in a legal battle someday. That’s what started that War with Mexico, you know, a dispute over who owned what. I try to keep us peaceful here in Spalding County by recordin’ everything proper. Your father ever tell you about Veracruz? That was some fight, the last one for the Avengers before we got mustered out. We were twelve-month recruits, started up right after the War got going. But we only went as far as Jalapa with Scott before they sent us back to Veracruz to take ship to New Orleans. That’s where Henry found the boy, as I recall.”

  “The boy?” John Henry asked. “What boy did he find in New Orleans?”

  “Not there. Back in Veracruz, while we were waitin’ on the ship. His folks had been killed in the siege the spring before. He must have been livin’ alone there all that time, ‘till Henry found him. Warn’t more than a child, livin’ in the rubble of our bombardment from the spring. We had artillery on that city for near three weeks, land and navy both. There wasn’t much left to live in, but he’d lived somehow. Henry found him hidin’ in the horse barn behind a church, sleepin’ in the hayloft. Like the baby Jesus, some of the men said. But other’n said, ‘Shoot the dirty little Mexican.’ But Henry said no. He was Second Lieutenant, so his word meant somethin’. He kept the boy with him, in case the men got it in their heads to do some shootin’, anyhow. Don’t think he really meant to take the boy home, just keep him from gettin’ killed. It was the boy’s idea to go along.”