Good Time Coming

by C. S. Harris

  A hand reached out from the crowd and his face fell, ludicrously, as the widow’s brother yanked him out of line.

  No one laughed.

  I wondered at the purpose of this odd little parade. Did the Federals imagine it might awaken within the townspeople some nostalgia for our lost common heritage? Was it intended to inspire the silent women, children, and old men with awe? Or was it merely intended as a demonstration of our own relative impotence – something they did, as Castile had said, because they could?

  We would learn all too soon that they could do much worse.

  Fourteen

  The next few days saw a constant stream of Federal gunboats, troop transports, and mortar schooners steaming past us again, headed north. Then came the news we were all dreading: the Federals were shelling Vicksburg again. I thought about my Aunt Em and her little blue-eyed, curly-headed daughter, Hannah, and felt a heavy weight pressing on my chest, a growing sense of ominous dread as we waited to hear what would happen next.

  The end of June brought my birthday, but it seemed hard to celebrate. Mama gave me a pair of gloves she knitted herself, and Mahalia baked a cake from rice flour that was so awful we all laughed so hard we cried.

  Afterward, I climbed the stairs to curl up on the window seat built into the dormer of Simon’s old room next to mine. Everything was much as he had left it the afternoon he died. My mother was normally ruthless about cleaning and throwing stuff out, but I guess even she didn’t have the heart to get rid of his collection of bird nests and driftwood, or his battered editions of The Leatherstocking Tales and Sir Walter Scott.

  I rested my head against the glass and whispered softly, ‘Hey, Simon.’ There were times the silence of the room daunted me, but not today. I said, ‘Today’s my birthday, you know. Funny, I’ve always thought of you as my big brother. But now I’m a whole week older than you were when you died. I guess I should feel bigger than you. Only, I don’t.’

  My voice trailed off and silence returned to the room. My eyes started stinging and my nose was running, but I sniffed and said, ‘I miss you, Simon. We all do. I know Mama never says anything, but I can tell. I reckon she’d be a lot easier about this war, if’n you was here.’

  I thought, You’d only be turning fourteen, so we wouldn’t need to worry about you going off to war, too. But I didn’t say it out loud, because I knew if Simon were here, he’d be raring to go off to war, just like Finn, and worrying it might end before he had a chance to fight so that someday he’d have to admit to his grandsons that he’d had no part in the struggle for our independence.

  I slid off the window seat and went to fiddle with Simon’s collection of old Indian points. It was Simon who’d pestered Castile into showing us how to make our first bows. I cleared my throat and said, ‘Finn and me are making new hickory bows, Simon. Finn says he don’t reckon I’ll have the gumption to actually kill anything. But I figure maybe I could shoot a turkey. I mean, they’re sorta like big, overgrown chickens, right?’

  The last time Castile had taken us hunting with our old bows and arrows, when Simon was still alive, I’d cried something fierce when Simon brought down a deer. But I’d been only nine at the time. Now I was twelve …

  I fell silent again. And for a moment, in the stillness, I thought I caught the distant sound of a boy’s familiar laughter.

  But it was only wishful thinking. I squeezed my eyes shut too late to stop the tears from spilling down my cheeks. ‘Oh, Simon. God, how I miss you.’

  One hot, still afternoon in early July, Castile rode out from Bayou Sara with the latest news from up the river.

  ‘Word is, them new mortar schooners ain’t no better than the gunboats at hitting Vicksburg’s defensive batteries,’ he said, his hat dangling from one big, blunt-fingered hand as he leaned against the trunk of the old oak near the kitchen door. ‘So now they’re fixin’ to dig a canal across that little spit of land made by the river’s bend and turn the river into it.’

  ‘You mean, cut off De Soto Point?’ My mother had been busy working with Mahalia putting up peach and fig preserves. But she’d come out of the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron, to talk to him. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Castile let out a soft huff. ‘Well, they’re serious, ain’t no doubt about that. I hear tell they reckon all they gotta do is dig a ditch four to six feet wide, and about as deep, and then once they let the water in, the Ole Mississippi’ll do the rest of their work for them. At first they was jist talking about usin’ the force of the river to dredge out a channel deep enough for them to send their ships through and bypass the guns at Vicksburg. But now they’re crowin’ about how they’re gonna change the course of the whole river and leave Vicksburg stranded high and dry.’

  ‘Could they do that?’ I asked.

  Castile scratched his chin and looked thoughtful. ‘Well, maybe – if they did it right. The thing is, the river is already fallin’. And I hear tell the angle they’re diggin’ at is all wrong.’

  Mahalia came to stand in the doorway from the kitchen, her face shiny from the heat of the fire. ‘I reckon them Northern boys ain’t none too happy, trying to dig through that clay in this heat.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Castile. ‘They ain’t the ones doing the diggin’. They got raidin’ parties impressin’ blacks up and down the river, and they’re settin’ them to doin’ the diggin’ for ’em. Mostly, they’re takin’ men off the plantations – they git hold of the plantation books and just call off the names of the young, healthy men they want. But they’re impressin’ free men of color, too, if they like the looks of ’em. That’s why I come out here to warn y’all. Don’t reckon they’d want old Priebus, but Avery better look sharp. I’m worried about my boy Leo, I am.’

  ‘How many men have they taken?’ asked my mother.

  ‘Over a thousand, last I heard. Most of the men they’re takin’ are happy to go. They march off laughin’ and a’singing, ’cause they reckon they’re gonna be earning their freedom. But it don’t make no difference if a man say he don’t wanna go, or that he cain’t leave his wife and children. They make him go. And if he try to resist, they jist shoot him. That way they know they won’t have no trouble with nobody else.’

  I stared off across the yard toward the sunlit pasture. The long fingers of gray moss dripping from the oaks hung still and lifeless against a hard blue sky. ‘How long is this canal gonna have to be?’ I asked. The idea of trying to turn a river as big and wide as the Mississippi struck me as too fantastical to be believed.

  ‘Pretty near a mile and a quarter, I reckon. Not as long as the New Basin Canal.’

  We all fell silent. The New Basin Canal had been dug several decades before, to connect uptown New Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain. But its making was so callous, its toll in lives so gruesome as to forever haunt all who knew of it. Because the canal cut through snake-infested swampland ravaged by Yellow Jack and intermittent fever, no one ever considered using valuable slave labor. The work was done by poor Irish and German immigrants, who worked for a pittance a day and died by the thousands. No one knew exactly how many because no one kept count. Most weren’t even given proper marked graves, but were simply pushed to one side where they fell, their bodies buried beneath the levees that rose up on either side of the canal.

  ‘Maybe it won’t be that bad,’ my mother said after a moment.

  Castile shook his head. ‘I hear they’re already dyin’ up there. The Federals are workin’ ’em to death without givin’ ’em enough to eat or even a proper place to sleep at night. We might not’ve seen any of their press gangs around here yet, but at this rate, I reckon we will, soon enough.’

  I watched my mother and Mahalia exchange a silent look I could not understand. Then a breeze kicked up, lifting the branches of the oaks against the sky and bringing us the earthy scent of coming rain.

  It was just a couple of nights later that old Mr Pierce Becnel rode up from Port Hudson with a letter from Papa.

  We had
n’t had a letter from Papa since the fall of New Orleans destroyed our mail system. This particular letter was over two months old and had come via a circuitous route, passed hand to hand, friend to friend, until it was finally carried to West Feliciana by Mr Becnel’s son, Peter, who’d contracted typhoid fever and been sent home to convalesce.

  Mr Becnel was a sweet, white-haired old man with three sons off fighting in the war. Mama invited him in for dinner and okra coffee, and listened with attention and concern while he talked about his sons. But I knew that, inside, she was as fidgety as I was for him to go so that we could read Papa’s letter.

  He’d barely turned his horse through the gate toward town when she tore open the envelope. Two dried, pressed violets fluttered out, their faint fragrance filling the room.

  ‘What does he say?’ I demanded impatiently when she paused to pick up one of the flowers, a faint smile pulling at her lips and lightening her eyes as she held it to her nostrils. Violets were amongst Mama’s favorite flowers, and I guess Papa knew that.

  ‘Well?’ I said again. Patience was never one of my virtues.

  She had to clear her throat a couple of times before she could start reading. ‘“My dears”,’ she began.

  It was how he always addressed his letters to us. My dears. I waited expectantly for her to continue.

  I pray to our Lord this letter finds you all well. I have been tolerably healthy, although I must admit that I don’t find sleeping on the hard ground quite as easy as the younger recruits. The morning frequently sees me hobbling around as stiff as an old man until the sun warms these aging bones. You’d think I was nearer fifty than forty.

  I gathered these violets from one of the old British trenches here at Yorktown. We are camped on the old battlefield in a maneuver to halt McClelland’s latest advance on Richmond. So I suppose it’s inevitable that, as I sit down beside my crackling campfire to write to you, I find my thoughts drifting to the war our grandfathers fought on this same ground eighty years ago. They were fighting – or thought they were fighting (isn’t that the same thing?) – for the same causes we say we’re fighting for: liberty, and independence, and freedom from tyranny and oppression. Their old battle songs remind me so much of our own, today, that they could be from the same war.

  But General Washington had the Comte de Rochambeau and his French troops at his side, and the French fleet just off shore, while we have only ourselves. I know there is continued hope the French and British will recognize us and perhaps even join us, but I don’t see it, myself. True, the United States’ efforts to enforce their blockade against us have caused outrage in Europe, just as the British navy angered us in 1812, when they seized our ships in their war against Napoleon. Perhaps if we are seen to be winning, they will jump in. The world does love a winner.

  But what I find myself coming back to is how the British offered freedom to the thousands of black slaves who fought against us in 1776 and again in 1812. When Cornwallis was forced to surrender here, in Yorktown, his black recruits were dragged back to slavery – or shot. Yet Cornwallis has gone down in our history books as the villain, while Washington is revered as a hero. So perhaps there is hope that future generations will not see us as the villains of this piece. Or is that dispensation available only to victors?

  Of course, unlike the old tyrant, King George, Lincoln has not yet offered freedom to the slaves of his enemies. I suppose the fact that nearly a third of all slave states are still in the Union makes such a proclamation difficult. Still, I suspect that in the end he will do so, for expediency’s sake. I’ve heard he often says that if he could save the Union without freeing one slave, he would do it, so I cannot believe his convictions are involved. If the North had won a speedy victory, the South would have been dragged back into the Union with its peculiar institution intact. Now, however, the longer we fight, the more certain it becomes that Lincoln will inevitably attempt to use the South’s African population against us and that slavery will be abolished, no matter who wins. If anything good could come of this accursed war, that would be it. But at what cost? The other former colonies of the New World have found a way to end slavery without the slaughter of hundreds of thousands; why couldn’t we have done the same? Is it somehow because of that very war, fought here on this battleground, so many decades ago? Did the Revolution bequeath to us a legacy of violence and rebellion, a too-ready propensity to solve problems with bloodshed? If so, what will be the effect of this war on our nation? I can’t think it will be good.

  I find myself looking out over this old battleground and thinking about how different our land would be today, had the French not joined our grandfathers, if Cornwallis and King George had won. Heresy, I know. And yet … had the British won, would we as a people be so enamored of violence, so stirred by the rhetoric of rebellion? Even more ironic to realize that, had our grandfathers lost, slavery would have ended here long ago – peacefully, as it has already in the rest of the British world.

  Useless thoughts, I know. But a man must have something to fill the long lonely hours of the night.

  I keep telling myself that, someday, this cruel war will be over, and I will be able to go home. I miss you and think of you both constantly. It’s an ache I carry with me always, this yearning to be with you, to sit on our front gallery and watch the mist gathering beneath the oaks in the gloaming of the day, to hear the chorus from the frogs down by the creek and breathe in the scents of the honeysuckle and night-blooming jasmine. Someday, I’ll be able to hold you both close to me again.

  Until then, good night, my dears. Keep safe. All my love forever, Papa.

  My mother’s voice cracked as she reached the letter’s end, so that she had to sit quietly for a moment, the closely-written pages clenched in one hand as she stared off toward the lane, her eyes blinking rapidly.

  I had never seen my mother cry, not even when Simon died. She did not cry now. I used to envy her ability to control her emotions, for my own anger and sorrow raged all too often unchecked. But lately I’ve come to wonder if she might have found the vicissitudes of her life easier to bear if she could have vented some of the turmoil she was surely feeling, even though she steadfastly refused to let it show. But perhaps she did express her sorrow, alone, at night, in the privacy of her room. At the time, that was a possibility that did not occur to me.

  She cleared her throat again and carefully refolded the letter. I knew it would join the stack of other letters, tied up in a white ribbon and kept in a small camphor box on her bedside table. I knew she reread them often.

  Sometimes I would creep into her room, open that box, and hold the stack of Papa’s letters in my hands, taking some kind of comfort from the knowledge that these pages had come to us from him, that they represented a tangible expression of his love for us, his thoughts of us. Yet I could never bring myself to reread them, although I could never quite explain why.

  I suspect perhaps it had something to do with the slim packets of letters I’d seen in other homes; bundles that would never be added to, for they were tied up with a black ribbon. The ribbon was always frayed and worn from constant untying and tying, as those few precious letters were read over and over again, a last tangible link to a loved one who was never coming home.

  I never acknowledged it, but it was as if I’d somehow convinced myself that if I never reread one of Papa’s letters, I could ensure that a new one would always eventually arrive. And then someday he himself would come riding up our lane – perhaps in the gloaming of the day, when the mist gathers beneath the oaks and the scent of night-blooming jasmine hangs sweet and poignant in the air.

  Fifteen

  The week after my birthday, Finn and I finished our new bows and started work on a supply of arrows.

  We tramped through the woods collecting strong, straight shoots of wild rose and black locust, which we then shaved and sanded before tipping them with points fastened with sinew. Castile chipped some of the arrowheads for us from old bottle glass, but we made oth
ers ourselves from antlers or bones or even thin scraps of metal.

  ‘The best feathers for arrows come from wild turkeys,’ Castile told us one rainy afternoon as he showed us how to strip some of the barbs from a feather’s vane and attach three of them to a shaft with more sinew. ‘But you can use eagle and hawk feathers, too.’

  He held up the first completed arrow, balancing the shaft on the pad of his finger. ‘You need the feathers because of the weight of the arrowhead. Without the fletching, the arrow’d jist tumble end over end.’

  ‘When do we git to go after wild turkeys?’ asked Finn, ever impatient.

  Castile glanced over at him and grinned. ‘When I can be sure that if you see one, you’re gonna be able to hit him.’

  And so Finn and I started spending time in the open wood behind our barn, shooting our newly finished arrows into a target Castile fashioned of hay. Before the war, most folks hunted turkeys with guns. But both powder and shot were now growing scarce. And since at that point the whole idea of hunting wild turkeys was mostly just a grand adventure for us anyway, creeping through the woods with bows and arrows only made it all the more fun.

  We didn’t realize, then, that the time was rapidly approaching when hunting for food would become very serious indeed.

  One afternoon in July, I came back from practicing shooting with Finn to find the house, kitchen, and yard oddly deserted.

  Puzzled, I set aside my bow and quiver and began searching the outbuildings, Checkers padding happily at my heels. I finally heard a familiar whoosh-whooshing sound and followed it to the barn, where I found Priebus seated on a three-legged stool beside our black and white cow, Queen Bee. ‘Come on now, darlin’,’ he crooned softly. ‘You ain’t sayin’ I done lost my touch, are you?’

  The milking was normally Mahalia’s chore, and I could tell from the angle of Queen Bee’s ears that she wasn’t taking kindly to Priebus’s technique.

  ‘Whatcha doing that for?’ I asked.