Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  They hadn’t brought much baggage with them, only Mattie’s train case and traveling bag and John Henry’s valise, and he gathered those together as they stepped down from the train and onto the open platform of the familiar gray granite station. He remembered that stone too well from the hot summer long ago when he had worked for his uncle on the railroad, helping out at the depot. But just look at him now: a fine young gentleman returning to Jonesboro with a bright future and a pretty lady on his arm. His railroad days were behind him, for sure.

  They hired a buggy for the short ride to Church Street and Mattie’s family home, the iron-rimmed buggy wheels crunching on the hard icy ground, and were greeted by a fluttering of curtains at the windows and Mattie’s younger sister Lucy stepping onto the porch.

  “Oh, Mattie! Thank goodness you’re here!” she said, shivering in her knitted shawl. “I wanted to send you a wire, but Mother said no, it was too expensive.”

  “Send a wire about what?” she said with a knowing smile. “Have you and Fred Young made wedding plans already?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s Pa. He’s awful sick. Mother’s afraid he’s failin’ . . .”

  Mattie caught her breath and reached for John Henry’s hand, but her voice seemed cool in the face of this unexpected emergency.

  “Well, I’m home now, Lucy. Where is he?”

  “In the parlor, in front of the fire. Mother had him moved in there since the bedroom is so cold. There’s a roof leak that needs mendin’ . . .”

  “We’ll worry about the roof later, Lucy. What does the doctor say?”

  “Pneumonia, a bad case, both lungs. And he’s so weak. . . .”

  “Damn the Yankees!” Mattie said quickly, “they’re gonna kill him yet!” It was the first time John Henry had ever heard her swear, and even Lucy seemed surprised, but Mattie’s face was a mask of anger that was harder than her words. She took off her bonnet and coat and handed them to Lucy, smoothing her hair with her hands.

  “I am goin’ in now, Lucy. You put on my coat and help John Henry get our things settled.” Then she reached her arm around her sister and hugged her close, whispering against her face, “It’s all right now, honey, Mattie’s home.”

  Lucy did as she was told and slipped into Mattie’s heavy coat and bonnet without bothering to tie the ribbons. She looked almost ill herself, her dark eyes circled with shadows of worry and too little sleep.

  “And how are you, Lucy?” John Henry asked, as he pulled the luggage down from the buggy. “You look mighty tired.”

  “I haven’t slept much since Pa got so sick. Mother’s busy takin’ care of him, and I do what I can to help, and watch the little ones, too.” Lucy certainly had her hands full with all those children of Aunt Mary Anne’s still living at home. There should have been a colored girl to help out around the house, but Uncle Rob had never had the money to hire help once he lost his businesses during the War and went to work for the railroad to make ends meet.

  “Where shall I put our things?” John Henry asked.

  “Upstairs,” she said, nodding. “Mary and the other girls are in Jim Bob’s old room now, but Mattie still shares with me when she comes home. I reckon you can share with Jim Bob again, next door to us.”

  “Is that quite proper?” he asked, surprised that Lucy would even suggest that an unmarried man would sleep so close to single young women. Aunt Permelia was always so careful about such things, keeping a discreet distance between the sexes in her Atlanta home.

  “The roof is leakin’,” Lucy answered simply. “There isn’t any place else. But it is good to have you here, John Henry. Merry Christmas.”

  Then she turned and went back into the house, and he followed her up the stairs to that leaking second floor, where the chill of winter filled the rooms and Christmas seemed like something already long gone.

  For most of a week the family waited, hovering around Uncle Rob’s bedside while the fever of the pneumonia raged on. There would come a crisis point, they knew, when the fever would finally break. But whether he would live through that crisis or not, only God knew.

  The doctor came every day, listening to Uncle Rob’s breathing and tapping on his chest trying to loosen the congestion. But his efforts never seemed to do any good, and Uncle Rob still labored for breath, wheezing so loudly that the rattle of it could be heard in the next room. The only blessing was that he was too feverish to know how ill he really was. In his poor deluded mind he seemed to think he was back in that Federal prison camp, and kept crying out for water from some merciless Yankee commander.

  Mattie cursed the Yankees more than once during those days, her face strained with anger and exhaustion as she stayed up nights watching at her father’s side. Until she’d come, Aunt Mary Anne had refused to leave the sickroom and take any rest at all, and the strain had nearly made her sick as well. But now that Mattie was home, Mary Anne gave up her night vigil and went to her own bed to cry herself into a fitful sleep.

  During the days, Mattie helped Lucy tend the younger children, staying patient with them somehow though she was fading from lack of sleep herself. And John Henry could do nothing to help lighten her burden but put his arms around her and let her rest her head against him for a few peaceful moments during the day. And knowing that Mattie, who had always comforted him, should come to him for comfort now, touched him more than any loving words she could have said.

  Then, three days before Christmas, Uncle Rob’s fever finally broke and the Christmas celebrating began. Uncle Rob had always loved Christmas—the “Holliday’s holiday” he called it, as Christmas was for children and he had more children than anyone else he knew.

  He was still very ill, of course, and unable to be moved from his bed by the parlor fire, so the family gathered there around him, singing Christmas songs with extra joy, and Mattie’s pretty voice sounding the sweetest of all. She had come so close to losing her beloved father without even getting to say good-bye, and now she had him back again. But John Henry found it hard to share in the happiness. He had watched his mother die, and there was a look about Uncle Rob’s pallid, blue-cast face that reminded him of life slowly slipping away.

  The day before Christmas Eve dawned thin and cold, and John Henry woke up shivering under the old quilt in the upstairs room next to Mattie’s. At first he didn’t know what it was that had awakened him so early. Most mornings he had to drag himself out of bed to get ready for work, a tiredness left over from his own bout with pneumonia the past year. But now with only the gray light that came before the sun, he was wide awake and listening. To what?

  Then he heard it again, the sound that must have brought him out of his sleep. There was a groaning in the thin winter air, and then a crash like glass shattering on a hardwood floor. He leaped from the bed and pushed open the shutters at the window. In the yard outside, the heavy limb of an old pine tree had broken away from its trunk and come crashing down to the frost-covered ground, weighed down with a mantle of ice.

  It was the first tree to bend and break that ice-storm morning, but there would be others to follow. As far as John Henry could see, the woods that surrounded the homes along Church Street were glistening, trees turned to glass with the ice. And before he could turn away from the window, there was another deep moaning and a shattering roar as another tree limb bent and fell to the hard icy ground. And off in the distance there were more tree limbs falling, laying heavy on the wires of the telegraph line, and cutting off Jonesboro from the rest of the world.

  By noon of that day, it was clear to John Henry that his uncle hadn’t long to live. The fever was gone, but Uncle Rob’s breathing had gotten slower and heavier until his chest was hardly moving at all. But Aunt Mary Anne insisted that he was just resting, getting his strength back after the illness, and when John Henry suggested that they ought to send for the doctor soon, she turned on him angrily and ordered him from the room.

  Mattie stood by her mother, believing along with her that their prayers had been answered
and her father was getting well. She went in and out of the sick room with a kind of manic joy, smiling and chattering away as if by the very force of her hope she could make him be well again. And even when the doctor finally arrived for his afternoon call and shook his head sadly, they refused to give up hope.

  John Henry waited outside the parlor sickroom, listening to the whispered voices behind the closed door. He could hear the doctor, trying to explain in calm tones what was to come, and Aunt Mary Anne’s voice, hoarse from sleepless nights and the strain of holding onto her husband’s life, and, softer, Mattie’s voice, comforting, trying to find hope in the doctor’s dim prognosis. And waiting in the darkness there in the hall, John Henry felt as helpless in the face of this passing as he had felt when he was a child, waiting outside in a dark hallway while his mother died a slow death.

  The doctor came out of the room a few moments later, medical bag in hand, shoulders hunched with resignation.

  “They won’t listen to me, either one of them,” he said. “I’m afraid Mrs. Holliday may lose her mind with grief if she won’t accept the inevitable.”

  “Are you sure he’s dyin’?” John Henry asked.

  “Son, I have seen a lot of life and too much of death, and I don’t think Captain Holliday has the strength to live any longer.”

  “Then . . . how long?”

  “Tomorrow, or maybe the day after. But no longer.”

  “But that’s Christmas!” John Henry said. “Surely on Christmas . . .” He still held onto some hope too, and a little faith in the kindness of God.

  The doctor shrugged again and reached for his overcoat. “I don’t believe God much cares about Christmas, one way or another. It’s just another day for livin’ and dyin’. I am sorry about your uncle. Try to be a strength to those ladies. It’s going to be a terrible shock to them, I’m afraid.”

  It was coming on dusk when Mattie finally left the sickroom, taking a little rest before starting the night watch. She stepped out of the dim, hot parlor and into the dimmer light of the hallway, wiping her brow with the corner of an old apron, and John Henry called to her from the dining room just beyond. He’d been waiting there for her, hoping that she would see the truth before he had to explain it to her.

  “How’s he doin’, Mattie?”

  “About the same. He’s sleepin’ again, but restless. At least the fever hasn’t come back. His skin feels very cool.” Then she smiled weakly. “He may be able to join us for Christmas dinner, Mother thinks, if we have it in the parlor.”

  “And what do you think, Mattie?”

  “I am too tired to think,” she answered heavily. “I’ve never been so tired in all my life.” Then she sank down into a chair and put her hands in her lap while she stared unseeing at the old Celtic cross hanging on the dining room wall.

  John Henry watched her, gathering his courage, then he said quietly: “He’s dyin’, Mattie. You’ve got to face it, and prepare yourself.”

  “Oh no, you’re wrong!” she protested. “We’ve been prayin’ so hard for him, Mother and I have, kneelin’ by his bed. Mother says . . .”

  “Your mother is beside herself, Mattie. It’s clear to the doctor. It’s clear to me, too. Can’t you see it, and do somethin’ to help her?”

  Mattie shook her head slowly, still staring at the cross on the wall, “But we have prayed so hard.”

  “I know, we’ve all been prayin’ for him. But he’s failin’, Mattie.” Then he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be worse to be unprepared for what’s to come?”

  “Unprepared? Yes, yes, you’re right,” she said absently, almost too tired to talk, “It would be worse to be unprepared . . . unshriven . . .” But then the distant look on her face disappeared, and she cried out, “Oh no, not unshriven! Please God, not unshriven too!”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” he asked, afraid that the strain had already been too much for her and she was delirious.

  “Not like my grandfather, not again! Please, Holy Mother, not that again!” But when she turned her face toward John Henry he saw no delirium there, only cold fear. “My grandfather Fitzgerald died unshriven, without the priest, condemned to dwell in Purgatory for all eternity. He took ill on a ride into the countryside past Fayetteville and died before a priest could come to give him final rites. My grandmother mourned out the rest of her days, prayin’ for his poor lost soul. He was forty-four years old when he died, John Henry—just like my father is now.”

  “But that was long ago, Mattie.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s like my grandfather all over again, and without the priest, my father will die unshriven, too! Condemned to Purgatory!” There was a sound like a keening wail in her voice. “Oh, John Henry, if he dies this way—for my poor mother to lose her father and her husband both!” Then she reached for his hand, holding it with a strength he didn’t know she had. “You must go and send word for the priest to come down, right away! You must send a telegram to Atlanta. Tell the priest at the Immaculate Conception that Captain Holliday may be dyin’, and must have his final rites. Please, please, you must hurry!”

  “I can’t,” he said, his heart sinking.

  “Why not?”

  “The wire is down, Mattie. There is no telegraph. The ice storm’s broken the lines.”

  Her mouth opened in speechless horror, her lips moving noiselessly. Then she shook her head and started to cry and John Henry put his arms around her, holding her while she sobbed as though her heart were breaking.

  “Shh, honey, shh,” he murmured against her hair, “it’s all right. It’s gonna be all right.”

  “Never,” she moaned, “never! Nothin’ will ever be all right again!” and she shuddered against him, overcome with grief.

  Then a glimmer of hope appeared, and John Henry almost laughed with the relief of it. “Then I’ll go to Atlanta myself and get the priest!”

  “But how can you?”

  “I’ll take the train,” he said reasonably. “I’ll be in Atlanta by midnight and go wake the priest if I have to, and send him here. You see? I said it would be fine!”

  But Mattie just shook her head and sighed despondently. “The train to Atlanta doesn’t run this late. The last one left at noon.”

  He had never felt so useless in all his life, bearer of bad tidings and comfortless cheer. But he couldn’t sit back and watch Mattie’s heart break this way, not while he still had half a heart left himself, and suddenly he knew what he had to do. He bent his head and quickly kissed her hair, then he pulled his arms from her and stood.

  “I’ll bring the priest, Mattie. Tell your mother, if she comes to her senses.” Then he strode out of the room and took his overcoat and hat from the coat hook in the hall, swinging the front door open and letting it slam behind him. The icy rain had almost ended but a sharp cold wind was picking up, and it cut across his face as he headed around the house toward the barn out back.

  “Where are you going?” Mattie cried after him, running out of the house with her own coat thrown around her shoulders and her hair coming undone in the wind.

  “I told you. To Atlanta to get a priest!”

  “But there is no train runnin’!”

  He kept walking, his leather boots crunching on the ice-hard ground. If he stopped to talk to her he might lose his resolve and change his mind, and there was no other way. “I’m gonna ride, Mattie. I’m sure your father won’t be needin’ the horse tonight.”

  “You can’t! Not in this awful cold! It’s a day’s ride to Atlanta, even when the roads are good!”

  “Then I’ll ride day and night.”

  Mattie stood watching him, unbelieving as he brought the horse out of its stall, bridling it and hefting the heavy saddle over its back. But when he slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle, she gasped and ran to his side, grabbing onto the reins as if she could hold him back.

  “Please don’t do this! It’s madness, you know it is!”

  “What else
can I do, Mattie? Tell me that. What else is there to do?”

  “You’ll kill yourself. You’ll freeze to death out there!”

  “We all die sometime, don’t we?” he said flippantly, but his heart was racing from emotion and a brooding fear. If he didn’t get the priest down to Jonesboro in time to grant safe passage to Uncle Rob’s soul, Mattie might be lost to a lifetime of melancholy. She was near enough to mad exhaustion already, but thinking of her father spending eternity in Purgatory would be damnation for her soul, too. So, for Mattie, he had to make this reckless ride.

  “Please, honey!” she said again, crying now and hanging onto John Henry’s arm as he pulled at the reins. “I can’t lose you, too!”

  The pleading in her voice and the pain and terror in her eyes tore at his heart, but he couldn’t let it stop him. He leaned down from the saddle, reaching his arm around her and holding her to him.

  “I’ll be back, Mattie, I swear I will! And I will bring the priest, as I have said. And you will never, never lose me!” Then he bent his head and kissed her, tasting tears and sweetness all at once before he let her go and rode off into that cold, darkening night.

  It was the worst weather for riding he had ever seen. The weeks of rain had turned the rutted dirt road to mud that froze into furrows and ridges when the ice storm came, and the horse stumbled and lost its footing again and again. The trees that crowded alongside the road were ice-covered too, their heavy limbs bowing down toward the ground and reaching out to snare a rider in the dark. And gusting out of the north, the winter wind was bringing snow with it, sending clouds scudding across the moon and making the moonlight seem to shimmer and glow off the icy fields. Then the road dropped down through river bottoms where the moonlight disappeared entirely, and the horse clattered across icy wooden bridges over silent, slow moving streams.