Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “Oh sweetheart!” she cried, her face turned up to his and her eyes filling with tears, “God already knows you have my heart!”

  And as he kissed her one last time, the bells in the Presbyterian Church steeple rang out, more like a mourning knell than a wedding chime.

  He couldn’t bring himself to say good-bye, even after the buggy ride home with Robert riding along beside in studied silence, and his own hurried packing and thank-yous to Aunt Permelia and Uncle John. But saying good-bye to Mattie would feel like a final farewell, after all that had gone on between them that morning, and he could never say that. Mattie, and dreams of Mattie, had been his life for as long as he could remember, and saying good-bye would leave a chasm in his heart that would never be filled, bigger even than the void his mother’s death had left, and how could a young man live who had lost so much heart already?

  He felt numb all over by the time the train pulled into Griffin, as though he had drunk himself into a stupor but without the pleasant whiskey euphoria to wash away his pain. And though he was expected at supper with Francisco’s family in Jenkinsburg, he was in no mood to make the visit. So he hired a horse and rode through Griffin instead, trying to remember a time when his world was still in one piece and his life had some hope in it.

  He rode past the little house on Tinsley Street where he’d been born and spent his first happy childhood years, past the old Presbyterian Church where he’d been baptized, past the schoolhouse where he’d learned his first lessons. He turned the horse and kept riding on out of town, past the Confederate Memorial with its angel standing sorrowfully over the rows of white grave markers, and up the hill to where Rest Haven Cemetery spread out across its lonely fields. At the far end of the cemetery, he stopped and slid down from the saddle and bent to brush away the overgrowing weeds from the small granite gravestone.

  “Hello, Ellie,” he said softly, calling Martha Eleanora by the name his mother had used for her. “It’s your brother, John Henry.”

  And as if she could hear him and understand, he went on talking, telling her things he himself was only just deciding. “I’m goin’ away, Ellie, I’m leaving here, goin’ back to Valdosta, I reckon. I don’t know who’ll take care of keepin’ the weeds off your grave when I’m gone . . .”

  He was quiet for a moment, staring down at that small grave.

  “Our mother used to come take care of you while she was alive. I used to come out here with her when I was a child, and watch her layin’ flowers over you. She told me to always remember I had a sister, even if we never knew each other. I wish I could have known you, Ellie. It would have been nice to have had someone to grow up with—a sister, a brother, someone. You never got a chance to know our mother very well, not like I did, but she loved us both very much. I was fifteen-years old when she died. You’d have been sixteen that summer . . .”

  He stopped talking, remembering his mother’s lovely face, her grieving for the daughter she’d never raised. Was there any part of life that didn’t end badly? Was there really any joy at all?

  “I reckon I’ve just imagined you all this time, thinkin’ of you gettin’ older every year. But you didn’t get much of a real life, did you, Ellie? Six months—hardly any time. Well, shall I tell you about life? Would you like to know what you missed? Life is lonely and cold, like that grave of yours. Until you find someone to love, and then for a moment, for just a moment, you think that life is wonderful. Then your mother dies, and your father leaves you, and your only love says—she can’t love you anymore . . .”

  His voice broke as he choked back angry, anguished tears. “That’s life, Martha Eleanora Holliday,” he said bitterly. “I guess you didn’t miss much, after all.”

  And in the quiet emptiness of the still evening air, he could almost hear his mother’s voice again, and she was weeping too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  VALDOSTA, 1873

  HENRY HOLLIDAY SAT IN THE PARLOR OF HIS SAVANNAH STREET cottage, smoking a cigar. To any other observer, he might have seemed contentedly reposed, letting out long puffs of smoke then tipping the ash of his Havana into a waiting china ashtray. But John Henry knew his father’s calm exterior covered an anger barely restrained.

  “To say that I am disappointed in you, John Henry, would be a lie. I am far more than disappointed. I am chagrined. What am I to say to all these good people in Valdosta who thought you were doin’ so well in Griffin?”

  Though father and son were nearly of a height now, Henry was still heavier, more sturdily built than John Henry, and looked all the larger for it. His high cheekbones were sun-reddened, his forehead showing deep lines from working out of doors. His silvered hair was still as thick and wavy as a young man’s, his clean-shaven face still square jawed and handsome. And, under a heavy brow, his light blue eyes were still as cool as steel.

  Looking into those eyes, John Henry felt like a boy again, in trouble for yet another hotheaded misdeed. “Tell them I changed my mind about Griffin,” he said uneasily, “and came back here to practice instead.”

  “A man doesn’t change his mind, just like that. Not about business. You build a business, you stand by it, you stake your reputation on it. But you don’t just walk out on it. Irresponsible, that’s what they’ll say you are. Foolish.”

  John Henry didn’t have to ask if his father thought him foolish too.

  “I didn’t just walk away, Pa,” he said in his own defense. “I packed up my equipment and put it on the train. I closed the business, that’s all. I’ll just open up again down here, or go in with Dr. Frink, if he’ll have me.”

  “He may wonder why you took such a sudden notion to leave Griffin. Did you get yourself into money trouble there, take on some bad debts? He won’t look kindly on that.”

  “No, Pa, it wasn’t money trouble. I was makin’ out all right.”

  “Carousin’, then? Did you spend too much time in the saloons?”

  He couldn’t deny that charge as easily as bad finances. He had indeed spent more time than he needed to in the saloons in Griffin and Atlanta both, but that was just loneliness, not bad business.

  “I did some drinkin’, but nothin’ to shame you.”

  Henry took another draw on the cigar but blew it out fast, impatient for answers.

  “Then what the hell brought you home like this? After all that talk of bein’ a man, makin’ your own way in the world and seein’ after Francisco’s children, I thought you’d finally managed to grow up some. Hoped you’d finally got some goals in life.”

  John Henry took a slow breath before answering, trying to steel himself for his father’s coming rage. For surely, Henry would have something to say about his reasons for leaving Griffin.

  “I did have a goal, Pa,” he said at last. “That’s what took me up to Atlanta in the first place. I had a plan to marry my cousin Mattie, and I reckoned bein’ close to where she was would make it easier . . .”

  He had expected Henry to curse out a response or turn that cold stare on him in disbelief. But his father’s sudden laughter set him back more than any cursing could have done.

  “Marry Cousin Mattie! Absurd! Close relations don’t breed well, John Henry. You should know that from livin’ on the farm.”

  It was an echo of Rachel’s words the year before, and that only made his own anger rise. “We’re not animals, Pa!” John Henry answered hotly, feeling the color rise in his face. To debase something as beautiful and pure as the love he and Mattie shared . . .

  But Henry laughed again, loud and hard. “We’re all animals, son. Especially men. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be. Once you get a good woman in your bed, one who understands about things, you’ll forget all this foolishness over Rob’s little girl.”

  “Like you forgot about my mother once you married Rachel?” He never would have spoken so rashly, but his father had goaded him into it.

  “That is none of your business,” Henry answered quickly, and for a moment the clear steel blue
of his eyes shadowed over. “You will watch what you say in regards to your stepmother, if you plan on livin’ under the same roof with her. So what happened to these fine plans of marryin’ your cousin? Did she have the good sense to turn you down?”

  “She turned me down, but not for lack of wantin’ it. It’s her religion. The Catholic church won’t allow first cousins to marry.”

  “Catholicism,” Henry said with disdain. “Your Uncle Rob had to convert to marry your Aunt Mary Anne.”

  “As I would have done, if it came to that.”

  “Catholic? You’d have turned Catholic? That would have broken your mother’s heart.”

  John Henry flinched, then he said without thinking, “And since when did you ever care about breakin’ my mother’s heart? Marryin’ your lover before your wife was even cold in her grave . . .”

  And in one muscular motion Henry rose from the chair and turned on him, hitting him hard across the face, and John Henry staggered under the blow.

  “I could kill a man for less than that,” Henry said, his eyes cold with anger. And for a moment, John Henry believed that he might try. Then Henry drew a slow breath.

  “Go to see Dr. Frink, then,” he said, and might as well have said Go to hell . . . “But don’t expect any help from me.”

  John Henry almost broke then, feeling again like that boy who could never be good enough, cowering in the shadow of the great hero, Henry Holliday. Then he put his hand to his stinging face, took a breath and put his shoulders back, raising himself to his full height, and he looked Henry square in the eyes.

  “I don’t expect anything from you, Pa. I don’t need anything from you.”

  Henry nodded. “Then that’s what you’ll get, son. Nothin’. Find yourself another place to live. You’re not welcome in my house any longer.” Then he turned and walked from the room and never looked back.

  Brave as John Henry’s words had been, there was nothing brave about the way he felt as he walked out into the shadows that steamy summer evening. For the first time in his life he was truly homeless, though his father’s house was only a few steps behind him. But Henry had thrown him out, and there was no turning back. So he stood in Rachel’s flowered yard, between the white-painted porch and the whitewashed fence, and wondered where he would go to now. Certainly, he couldn’t beg refuge of any of the townsfolk in Valdosta. Henry Holliday was a hero to them, a fine and prosperous member of the community. If Henry wouldn’t take his own son in, why should they?

  He had never felt so alone, deserted by his past and his future both. So when the front door creaked open and Rachel stepped down from the porch to join him, he almost welcomed her company.

  “He’s hot-headed, sometimes,” she said. “But I reckon you were always a little hot-headed, too.”

  John Henry didn’t answer, though he had to agree with what she said. They were both of them hot-headed, stubborn men.

  “Much alike as you are,” she went on, “seems like you’d get along fine. Maybe someday you will.”

  John Henry shook his head. “Be hard for us to get along, now he’s put me out of his house.”

  “So where you goin’ to?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” John Henry answered. “You got any suggestions?”

  Of course he didn’t expect a reply. Common as she was, Rachel knew a wife’s place and wouldn’t go against her husband’s wishes. If his father meant him to be homeless, then homeless he would be. So he was surprised when Rachel took a breath and said in a voice hardly above a whisper:

  “Your Uncle Tom McKey’s moved up here, you know. He’s come to be near his Sadie Allen, seein’ as they’re plannin’ on marryin’ and all. He took up that family land over on the Withlacoochee, down the old Troupville Road, built himself a nice little cabin there. I reckon you remember the place.”

  He remembered it all right. He’d been there plenty of times, swimming in that bend of river near where the Withlacoochee and the Little River met. He’d been there with Mattie even, when her family had stayed with his during the last days of the War. That land had seemed like a green refuge to him then, far away from the troubles of the world. Maybe it could be a refuge for him again . . .

  “I’d need a horse to get there before full dark,” he said aloud, thinking of the four miles between Valdosta and there. And once again, he was surprised by Rachel’s words.

  “I reckon your Pa wouldn’t notice if one of his horses was to spend the night elsewhere. Not once I give him a glass or two of that bourbon he keeps under the sideboard. He’ll rant and rave awhile about you, then settle down for the night after that. If that horse was to be back by mornin’, I don’t reckon he’d notice it was ever gone.”

  John Henry looked at her in astonishment. With her unruly waves of yellow hair and her untidy house dress, she still looked much like the young farm girl his father had taken to wife, and whom John Henry had spent the better part of seven years despising. Yet here she was, acting amazingly like a woman with a real concern for his welfare.

  “Why are you doin’ this for me, Rachel? You know my Pa wouldn’t take kindly to it.”

  “I ain’t doin’ it for you, John Henry, nor for your Pa neither,” she said. “I reckon I’m doin’ it for your Ma.”

  Then she turned and walked back into the house without bothering to explain what she meant.

  And though he didn’t stop to ponder on her words just then, he couldn’t help remembering them as he rode his father’s horse out the old Troupville Road toward the Withlacoochee River. Had he been wrong about Rachel all these years? Had she been more, after all, than just his father’s mistress, stealing away his mother’s husband and home? Then another memory came to his mind and stayed: his mother’s grave at Sunset Hill Cemetery, ringed with river stones and covered with flowers like a garden plot. Someone had watched over it all these years, washing the gravestone and turning the sad burial place into something beautiful. Someone had tended to the memory of Alice Jane, when even her husband seemed to have forgotten her. Rachel, he thought . . .

  And for the first time, the thought of her didn’t make him feel sick inside.

  Tom welcomed him without question, as he always had, and John Henry let him think the unexpected visit was nothing more than a social call. Bad enough to be thrown out of his father’s house without having to admit as much to anyone else—even family as close as his Uncle Tom. And thankfully, there was so much to be done on Tom’s new place that there wasn’t much time to ask or answer many questions, anyhow.

  The homestead was a stone’s throw from the Withlacoochee, near the bend in the river that John Henry had called his swimming hole. Tom had cleared an acre or so of the woods away and built his cabin facing the water. Behind it was a well-house and outhouse, a kitchen garden already in cultivation, a nearly completed barn, and even the start of a buggy house, though John Henry couldn’t see the need for something as fancy as a buggy out there in the woods. Wouldn’t a spring wagon be enough for trips to the general store in Valdosta?

  “The buggy’s not for bringin’ supplies around,” Tom told him. “It’s for Sadie, once we get married. She likes to be up and doin’ all the time, restless like. With the buggy, she can go off visitin’ in town whenever she likes.”

  “So why live away out here then? Why don’t you buy a place in town instead?”

  “I like the peace and quiet out here. I like bein’ close to the water. I’d like my boys to grow up swimmin’ in that swimmin’ hole someday—and we’re hoping for a houseful of ‘em, eight or nine maybe.”

  “Then you’re gonna need a bigger cabin, Tom.”

  “This one’ll do for now. But I sure could use your help gettin’ this buggy house finished up. The runabout arrives next week, so I’ll be needin’ a place to put it.”

  “But why buy the buggy before you even get married?” John Henry asked, as Tom had told him the wedding was still a year or two away.

  “Your Pa got me a deal on it, before he sol
d the buggy business and opened the furniture store. Glad I went ahead and ordered it when I did. Took seven months to get here, as it was, but I expect it’ll be worth it. It’s a pretty one: black with a gold stripe down the side and real Morocco leather upholstery. Set me back a bit, I can tell you.”

  “I guess that explains the straw mattress on the bed. Won’t Sadie be expectin’ feathers?”

  “She will, and she’ll get ‘em, too. Now your Pa’s got that furniture business, I reckon I’ll be orderin’ a bedroom suit next. But for now, you and I will have to share what’s there—I’ll put the mattress on the floor for you and sleep on the ropes myself. Best I can offer company for a while.”

  “It’s plenty, Tom, and I appreciate your hospitality,” he said, though it was hard to hear Tom’s happy plans for the future when his own plans had come to nothing. So he was glad when the talking stopped and he could pour himself into work instead. Though John Henry had little experience as a builder, Tom was a patient and able teacher, and they worked well together. Still, he wondered if Tom’s building techniques were a little out of the ordinary: where another man might have used a handsaw to cut the soft pinewood for the buggy house, Tom sliced into it with the monstrous knife he’d carried off to War with him.

  “The Hell-Bitch has her uses still,” he said with a grin as he handed the knife, swamp oak handle first, to his nephew. “As I recall, you figured she was for throwin’. But fifteen inches long and two inches wide don’t throw well. You just cut with her.”

  John Henry took the knife in his right hand and turned it over, feeling the weight of the thing and admiring how both sides of the blade were still sharpened to a shine.

  “Shame you only use her for slaughterin’ hogs and cuttin’ wood,” he said. “Your Hell-Bitch is a fightin’ weapon if I ever saw one.”

  “She is, but I’d rather not be in any fight where I’d have to use her. Hand-to-hand is dangerous fightin’. Mostly, both men get hurt. If it came to a fight, I’d rather pull a pistol than a knife, anyhow. And I’d rather aim a shot-gun than a pistol.”