Southern Son

by Victoria Wilcox

  “You can’t aim a shot-gun,” John Henry remarked, “unless you’re aimin’ at a deer. The pellets just scatter all over, you know that. Better stick with the pistol, if it comes to a fight.”

  It was just conversation to pass the time while they worked together, but it was pleasant enough talk, and kept his mind distracted from his troubles. But when Tom called the day’s work to a halt and darkness gathered around the homesite, John Henry’s misery came racing back.

  The nights were the hardest, out in the woods. While Tom slept on a blanket thrown over the ropes of his single bed, too tired and content to be uncomfortable, John Henry tossed and turned on the straw mattress pallet on the floor. Mattie! Mattie! His heart cried out for her, his whole being ached to be with her. How could he live with this emptiness? How could he live and watch her with some other man someday, some good husband who would love her and hold her and give her children . . .

  The thought of it turned his stomach, made him want to scream and flail at the awful fate that had made his only love his own cousin, closer to him than any other woman could ever be, too close for them to ever be together. And then that cruel fate took a name and he cursed God for making them cousins, for making Mattie a Catholic so that she could not marry him. Cruel, contemptuous God who sat in holy judgment against the dearest, sweetest emotions John Henry had ever felt. Did it please God to see him suffer so?

  Then he remembered that simple faith that Mattie had always had, childlike belief in God’s grace. Without that faith, she wouldn’t be his beloved Mattie, and he almost laughed at the awful irony of it. If her faith didn’t mean so much to her, if she could turn away from it and marry him without the blessings of the priest, he would have loved her less. It was her strength that made him lean on her, made him love her so desperately. It was her strength that denied him her love.

  He hardly slept at all, those nights at Tom’s cabin, and each new day as Tom arose rested and ready to start to work again, John Henry was more tired than the day before. The tiredness brought back the cough that had plagued him in the winter and spring, and the cough made it even harder to sleep. And by the time the buggy house was nearly done and Tom was ready to ride into town and collect his long-awaited runabout, John Henry was worn down to exhaustion.

  “Why don’t you stay here and get some rest?” Tom said as he packed a saddlebag and put on his town clothes. “I’ll be gone overnight. I usually try to stay over and go to church with Sadie whenever I get into town. And I don’t suppose you’ll be wantin’ to pay a visit on your Pa, anyhow . . .”

  He didn’t need to say more, for like his sister Alice Jane, Tom had a way of knowing what was troubling John Henry without ever being told.

  “I don’t reckon Pa would appreciate my comin’ around,” John Henry replied. “I don’t reckon I’ll be visitin’ with him ever again, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Only if you want to tell it,” Tom said. “I know there’s been bad feelings all around, ever since your Pa remarried. And it don’t help that Henry’s not one for talkin’ much. But that don’t mean he don’t love you, John Henry. Some things just take time, I reckon.”

  “I reckon,” John Henry said, though he took no comfort in the thought. Time hadn’t fixed anything with Mattie, only made matters worse. He didn’t see how an evening’s visit with his father would repair the rift between them. “I guess I’ll stay here and get some sleep, like you said. You go on and have a good visit with Sadie, show her that pretty new buggy.”

  But as Tom rode away down the old Troupville Road, headed toward Valdosta, John Henry had a sudden urge to run after him. Tom had been his comfortable companion these hard days, and without him the woods were going to seem mighty lonely. For while he had never minded being alone before, now the quiet seemed to settle down on him like a pall, and he feared he was about to become melancholy. There was a medicine to ward off the melancholy of course, the same spiritus fermenti that doctors prescribed for coughs and such, and Tom happened to have a bottle or two tucked away in his dish cupboard. And though John Henry knew that drinking alone was a sign of a weak will, he didn’t see how he had much choice. Under the circumstances, he could either drink alone to try and push away the despair, or succumb to his misery completely. Besides, a little whiskey might help him to sleep . . .

  But sleep was long in coming that night, even after he’d emptied his little silver pocket flask and downed most of one bottle and contemplated starting onto another. Filled with whiskey as he was, he lay on the straw mattress pallet on the floor in a drunken half-wakefulness remembering all the sorrows of his life. In his twenty-one years, he’d lived through more than most men would see in a lifetime, and now it all seemed to come back to him at once: the horror of War and the humiliation of Reconstruction, the frustrated anger of the boys who called themselves Vigilantes and the murder of their hero, the Captain; the failed retribution of the Courthouse bombing; the arrest and imprisonment of his friends and his own unworthy escape from punishment; the long, awful death of his mother; the disloyal remarriage of his father. And round and over and through it all, his doomed love for Mattie who could never be his. When he finally slept, the memories turned to nightmares.

  He woke in a sweat, the summer sun glaring in through the cabin windows and turning the place breathless as an oven. It was late morning, maybe, or early afternoon, and hot as hell already, but it wasn’t the heat that had awakened him. From somewhere outside the cabin came sounds that shouldn’t be there: voices talking, getting closer.

  He rolled over and reached for his valise, pulling out his pistol, the walnut-gripped Colt’s Navy revolver Uncle John had given him as a coming-of-age gift. Hands shaking, he loaded two chambers just to be safe and ready to frighten away whoever might be trespassing on the McKey property. But ready as his pistol was, John Henry himself was still so hung-over that he could barely stand without swaying, and the swaying made him so sick he thought he might retch.

  He staggered to the door of the cabin and out into the hot summer sun, looking around for the source of the sound, and didn’t see at first where it was coming from. The clearing around the cabin was still undisturbed, the barn and the buggy house closed up as Tom had left them. Then the sound came again, more distinct this time, and his eyes followed it across the bend of the river to the far side of the swimming hole. There in the green shade of the overhanging trees, a gang of colored boys was stepping into the water. They were stripped naked, skinny-dipping like young men did, and laughing as they splashed in the shallows. Behind them, their homespun clothes hung on bushes along the sandy riverbank.

  It should have been a pleasant picture, those careless colored boys sneaking out for a Sunday afternoon’s frolic. But to John Henry, it seemed like a sacrilege. This was his swimming hole—his and Mattie’s. He had brought her here that long-ago summer when her family had stayed with his at Cat Creek. He had watched her walk down into the river, the sun glinting off her auburn hair and the water making her cotton dress cling to the curves of her body. He had laid beside her here, in the grass along the riverbank, feeling an urge to touch her in a way he did not then understand. And all at once, his passion for her and his pain at losing her swelled up inside of him, spun together with the frustration at his useless life, and came flooding out in an anger he could barely control. He raised his pistol and without bothering to shout a warning, fired one shot across the river.

  Unsteady as he was, the shot went over the heads of the boys swimming there, but they heard it whistle past, and ran yelling for the riverbank.

  “Y’all get out of here!” John Henry screamed hoarsely, “damn you, get away from our land!” His whole body shook with the words, so hard he didn’t think he could fire a second shot if he had to. But as long as the boys cleared out the way they were told, he wouldn’t need to find out.

  But one of the boys seemed not to understand, or care, that he had been justly ordered out of the water, and he stopped where he was and looked
back across the river to where the shot had come from. Then, standing there naked in the water, white teeth gleaming in his dark face, he started to laugh.

  It was the laughter, coming like a challenge, that made John Henry’s liquored blood rise, reminding him of the laughter of the guard at the Courthouse the day the carpetbagger had come to town, the day the Yankees had taken his friends away to prison, the day his father had slapped him hard across the face and called him a shame. And all at once, the pistol in his hand seemed to take on a life of its own, rising to the challenge and firing a shot square into the colored boy’s laughing face.

  The other boys heard the shot, saw their companion spin around, watched his blood flood into the river as he fell, faceless, into the water. For a moment, neither the boys nor John Henry moved, as the smoke of the gunpowder rose up into the air and wafted across the river, lazy as a summer’s cloud. Then one of the boys screamed, ran toward the water, put out a hand as if to raise his fallen friend, then turned and raced into the woods, naked still. His companions, grabbing for what clothing they could reach from the bushes, ran after him into the trees.

  In the still shadows of the swimming hole, the blood of the dead boy was turning the green water to crimson red.

  The pistol dropped from John Henry’s hand as he fell to his knees in the dirt.

  “Oh my God!” he whispered, more a desperate prayer than a curse. “Oh my God, what have I done?”

  “Looks like you’ve killed a man,” Tom McKey said heavily, stepping up behind him. In the yelling and the commotion of the last few moments, John Henry hadn’t heard his uncle drive up in his new buggy, fresh back from church in Valdosta. “So I reckon we’ve got some plans to make.”

  “Plans?” John Henry said, bewildered. “What kind of plans?”

  “How to get you gone before the sheriff hears of this. Lucky for you, it’s Sunday, and the law won’t want to be bothered with a colored boy’s killin’ just yet. That gives us a little time, anyhow.”

  And when John Henry didn’t move, frozen like a dreamer in an awful nightmare, Tom grabbed hold of his shoulder and yanked him to his feet.

  “One man’s dead, John Henry,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure another one lives. Now go on inside and brew some coffee to sober you up while I get that poor boy’s body out of the river. His parents shouldn’t have to find him like that.”

  But Tom McKey already realized what John Henry was too stunned and scared to know: that whether the boy was found floating in the river or buried in a shallow grave, once word got around that a killing had taken place on the Withlacoochee, law men and curious folk from all over the county would be coming to the McKey land, looking for the killer.

  “It ain’t slavery days anymore,” Tom tried to explain to him. “Back then, you killed a colored, you only had to deal with his master, or pay the price of him. We’ve been reconstructed now. A black man’s life is equal to a white man’s, in the law.”

  “But they were trespassin’ on our land . . .” John Henry said in weak defense, still not believing what had happened. Surely, it was just some bad liquor dream he was having and he’d wake from it soon enough. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

  But Tom went on talking as though it were all too real.

  “The river ain’t ours, John Henry, and you know it, only this stretch of land alongside of it. But there’s land the law around here can’t catch you on, and that’s where we’re headed, fast as I can get us out of here.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “I’m talkin’ about Banner Plantation. Georgia law won’t follow you down into Florida, not for a colored boy. Equal law don’t mean equal justice, lucky for you. Now finish up that coffee and pack up your gear. Too bad your first ride in the buggy has to be for such a cause.”

  “The buggy? You’re comin’ too?”

  Tom looked at him somberly. “I doubt you’d make it there on your own, the way you’re lookin’ now. Besides, you took to a dangerous road once to help get me safely home. I reckon it’s my turn to do you the same favor. I just wish you and your Pa were on speakin’ terms. Was a time, once, when Henry got you out of a fix like this without hardly anyone noticin’.”

  But John Henry shook his head and looked up at Tom with terrified eyes. “No Tom, I never was in a fix like this before.”

  Tom didn’t even bother answering.

  Alone on horseback, John Henry could have made the ride to the McKey plantation in just a few hours. But in a buggy with a horse already winded from the trip back from Valdosta, the drive took until well past dark. But at least there was only a crescent moon that night and no bright moonlight to show off Tom’s new buggy. With its shiny black paint and that bright gold stripe down the side, anyone seeing it racing across the Georgia state line would surely have remembered it.

  John Henry knew that Tom was taking an awful chance, driving him down to Florida. Tom had nothing to do with the shooting, and could have just walked away from the whole thing. Helping his nephew escape from the law would make Tom an accessory to a killing, if the courts ever got wind of it. And the fact that Tom had taken the Hell-Bitch along for the ride, out of its scabbard and slid down between the leather seat cushions and the wood frame of the buggy, showed he knew what kind of danger he was in. For even after he’d delivered John Henry to Banner Plantation, Tom would have to find cause why he himself shouldn’t be suspected of murder. It had happened in the river alongside his own property, after all, and within clear sight of his cabin.

  “At least I went to church, Sunday mornin’,” Tom said to his older brother Will that night, as he explained what had caused their unexpected visit. “The whole Methodist congregation can vouch for that, and Sadie’ll say I spent the rest of the afternoon havin’ supper with her family. Lucky for us all, I didn’t make any big show of leavin’ Valdosta when I headed back out to the river. Hopefully, nobody noticed me go.”

  “I reckon we’ll find out soon enough about that, once the law starts lookin’ into things,” Uncle Will replied. Though he’d been fast asleep when Tom and John Henry arrived, he was wide-awake now, and considering the situation. John Henry was sorry to have caused him the trouble. Uncle Will was still not entirely healed of the wound he’d taken at the Battle of Malvern Hill during the War, though Uncle James McKey had done his best to repair the damage, and Will had a continuing kidney ailment that left him weak much of the time. And now, sitting in the oil lamp shadows of his parlor, he looked far older than his thirty-six years, with his pale face drawn and his sandy hair turning to gray.

  “Let’s not tell the sisters about this,” he said quietly, nodding toward the bedroom where Aunt Ella and Aunt Eunice were sleeping. “You know how women can talk, and this needs to stay as quiet as we can make it. So who was this boy who took the bullet? Is his family well known around town?”

  Tom shook his head, “I didn’t see him before John Henry fired. The other boys were gone before I got a good look at ‘em. And after, there wasn’t much left to identify.”

  “John Henry?” Will asked, turning toward his nephew, “did you know the boy?”

  John Henry thought back to that awful moment when the liquor and the anger overcame him and his pistol seemed to fire itself, but couldn’t remember anything but sound and smoke and the boy falling faceless into the water. “I don’t know, Uncle Will. I don’t think so . . .”

  Will sighed and sat back in his chair, considering. “Not knowin’ him makes it more difficult, I reckon. Can’t quiet his family with money, if we don’t know who they are. Don’t know who to watch out for around town, either. What about Henry?” he asked, turning back to Uncle Tom. “Does he know about this yet?”

  “I doubt it,” Tom said. “I didn’t dare take the time to stop by and visit with him.”

  “Well, we’ll have to get word to him first thing in the mornin’, have him do what he can there to put an end to this. Henry’s a powerful man in Valdosta. Surely he’s got some inf
luence with the law . . .”

  “Pa won’t help me,” John Henry said. “He told me he wouldn’t ever come to my rescue again like he did over the Courthouse trouble. He said I’d be on my own, next time I got in a fix with the law . . .”

  He’d expected his uncle to have some sympathy for him in the face of his father’s neglect. But Uncle Will’s words put a whole new frightening light on things.

  “This isn’t just your fix, John Henry,” Uncle Will said somberly. “It’s all of ours, seein’ as you chose to kill that boy on our part of the river. My name’s on that land deed, too, along with Tom’s. Supposin’ somebody decides it was me who happened to be there today, takin’ a look over things? Supposin’ somebody decides I’m the one who did the shootin’?”

  “But you weren’t there!” John Henry exclaimed. “You’ve been in Florida the whole time, the sisters can prove that . . .”

  Even in the shadows, John Henry could see the weariness in Uncle Will’s eyes.

  “What a man can prove and what he gets accused of are two different things. Oft times, an accusation’s all it takes to ruin a man’s good name. So first thing in the mornin’, I’ll ride over to Belleville and send a wire to Henry, ask for his help. Though I’d rather take a hangin’ myself then beg anything of him . . .”

  For the first time since the shooting, John Henry looked beyond himself to what he had done to his family. As Tom had said, Henry’s marriage to Rachel had left bad feelings all around. Now his uncles would have to throw themselves on Henry Holliday’s mercy to keep the McKey name clean.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Will,” John Henry said truthfully, “I am so sorry for troublin’ you . . .”

  “Seems like it’s killin’ that boy you ought to be sorry for, John Henry, not the trouble that’s come after it. If you’d have kept your head this mornin’, none of this would have happened. I fear Alice Jane was right in what she used to say about you.”