by C. S. Harris
‘But that’s what they are!’
‘Yes. But I don’t think they saw themselves that way, at first. I think they saw themselves as liberators. Heroes. Only, we treated them like cockroaches. So now they’re angry.’
‘I don’t understand why they just won’t go away and leave us alone.’
‘Because they’re stubborn, and proud, and they feel like their honor is on the line. And because they have a vision of the Unites States as growing ever bigger and stronger, and adding more and more territory, so they’re not about to let a great, fertile, wealthy chunk of it slip away. They see this country as something ordained by God as a shining city on a hill – a noble beacon for the rest of the world to follow. But by seceding, the South has threatened to destroy what they believe is their sacred destiny. So it’s no longer just about the flag. Now it’s about God, too.’
Her words echoed something I’d heard Bernard Henshaw say last spring, the day the Federal fleet first sailed up the river. I wondered if he and Mrs Henshaw had still been in Bayou Sara when the men from the Essex rampaged through it. His untidy little book and stationery shop was now just a smoldering ruin. Although I doubted he’d been doing much business before the Federals came, anyway.
For some reason, I found myself blinking back tears. The sky was now dark except for a tiny red glow on the horizon. The air smelled of damp grass and jasmine, and the trees throbbed cheerfully with birds settling down for the night. Yet, for one moment I imagined I could taste the bitter remnants of smoke and charred wood in the air.
I said, ‘Castile thinks they’ll be back.’
There was a time I would have hoped my mother would contradict me; perhaps a part of me still did. But all she said was: ‘We’re going to make it through this, Amrie. If we keep our wits about us and stay strong, we can make it.’
Or die trying. She didn’t say it, of course. But the echo of it was there, in the wind, nonetheless.
Twenty-Four
We all held our breath, waiting for the Essex to return.
But we just kept waiting.
September came, and the days began to grow shorter. In the woods, the sumac turned a brilliant scarlet, and the yellow leaves of the willow trembled in a blessedly cool breeze. With Horst Fischer now off to war, there was no school. At first I gloried in the freedom from the tedium and grinding boredom of daily lessons that moved at a snail’s pace. But as September stretched into October, I came to realize that this wretched war was robbing me of something more ephemeral yet infinitely more valuable than the material goods the Federals helped themselves to so freely. And so I came to a decision: I might be scruffy and barefoot, but I refused to be ignorant, too. If I didn’t have a schoolteacher, I was just going to have to educate myself.
And so, one rainy afternoon, I threw open the doors of the glass-fronted bookcases that flanked the fireplace in the parlor, and took stock. Some of the works, such as those by Virgil and Shakespeare, were old friends. But there were many that had always vaguely intimidated me, and these were the ones I forced myself to focus on – things like Herodotus and Plato, Cicero and Gibbons and Montesquieu. I drew up an ambitious list of books I intended to study and the order in which I would tackle them.
The problem was finding the time to actually read. Daylight hours were all too often swallowed by work, while our tallow candles were too precious to burn much at night. I tried reading by firelight, but it made my eyes sting, and the top of my head would get so hot, it hurt. But I kept at it.
And then, one afternoon when Finn and I were thrashing the branches of the pecan trees while Mahalia and Mama scooped the falling nuts into baskets, Trudi Easton came to see us.
She was a bony, thin woman with bulging eyes, a weakly receding chin, and big front teeth that all combined to make her look a bit like an angry rabbit. Her husband, a lawyer named Matt Easton, was a captain with a unit stationed over in Florida. She kept a coiled lock of his hair inside a heart-shaped crystal locket framed in gold that she wore always, and she had a habit of clutching it when she spoke, as if she drew confidence and reassurance from the tangible reminder of her absent spouse. She had five children, a couple of whom were around my age. Mama said to me once that she wondered how Miss Trudi was making ends meet, now that Mr Easton was off soldiering rather than lawyering. We’d heard she had to sell her horse and buggy, and when she came to visit us, she was walking. I saw her stop at the end of the drive, wipe off her feet with a rag she carried, and put on her shoes before continuing up to the house.
Mama set aside her pecan basket and went to invite her into the parlor. I tagged along out of vulgar curiosity. Trudi Easton had never been anything but polite to Mama – painfully, ruthlessly polite. I could not imagine what had brought her here.
‘Why, thank you kindly,’ she said when Mama handed her a cup of okra ‘coffee’. ‘Right cool today, isn’t it?’
‘Nice weather for working,’ said Mama. ‘And walking.’
A faint hint of color touched Trudi’s cheeks. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’m wondering if you might be interested in signing a petition some of us mothers have drawn up to send to Governor Moore.’ She withdrew several folded pages from her tattered needlepoint reticule. I noticed they were actually pieces of cut up wallpaper; proper paper was getting increasingly hard to find.
She said, ‘I’m sure that you, like so many of us, are concerned about the effect the continued lack of a schoolteacher is bound to have on our children’s education. So we’ve written a petition asking the governor to assign one of the more learned members of our military to serve as St Francisville’s schoolmaster. After all, the future of our young country is at stake. What sort of nation will we be able to build once this cruel war is over, if our children are ignorant?’
I looked at my mother. She said, ‘I’ll sign it, of course. But … Why don’t you do it, Trudi? Teach school, I mean. You know you could do it.’
I wanted to throw something at my mother. Horst Fischer had been bad enough; I could not imagine Trudi Easton as our schoolmistress.
‘Me?’ Trudi Easton stared at Mama as if she’d just suggested she take up can-can dancing in an Irish barroom. ‘I hope you don’t mean to suggest that I need the money?’
‘No, of course not,’ lied my mother. ‘It’s just that, while I commend your initiative, I fear this petition may not work. The war has closed schoolrooms all over the South; I don’t see how any governor could agree to spare enough soldiers to man all of them – however much he might wish to do so. So while we hope he will agree to your proposal, why not consider alternatives if he does not? I know you attended a prestigious academy in Philadelphia—’
‘Hampton Hall,’ said Miss Trudi with no small amount of pride.
‘You could even teach the older children Latin, and—’
‘No.’ Miss Trudi pulled her chin back into her neck in a way that thrust out her top teeth even more than usual.
My mother said, ‘It’s become quite common in the North, you know, for ladies to serve as schoolmistresses.’
‘Not ladies, surely?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Really? Well, we all know what the North is like.’
My mother set aside her cup. I could tell she was choosing her words carefully. ‘While I understand – and applaud – the sensibilities that in the past have prevented Southern wives and daughters from venturing into public employment, surely the exigencies of war must take precedence over such constraints? We are talking about our children’s future.’
For one moment, Miss Trudi looked tempted. Then she said, ‘No,’ her fist coming up to tighten around her locket with such fierceness I wondered she didn’t snap the chain. ‘Even if I were willing to do it, Mr Easton would never agree to such a thing. For his wife to be seen working outside the home would be an unconscionable affront to his pride.’
‘Understandable, perhaps,’ said my mother smoothly, ‘if you were doing it because you needed
the money. But we all know that’s not true.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Miss Trudi did not meet my mother’s gaze. ‘But … Mr Easton would still never allow it.’
‘Perhaps you could write and ask him – in case the petition to the governor should fail.’
‘I suppose I could, yes.’ She sat up a little straighter, a half smile flirting with her crimped lips. ‘As you say, the future of our nation and our children is at stake. Why shouldn’t we women fight for the South here at home in our own way? We’ve rolled bandages and scraped lint and sewed uniforms; why not pick up the tasks our men are unable to do now that they are off to war?’
‘Why not, indeed?’
It suddenly occurred to me that here might lie part of the explanation for our community’s continuing hostility to my mother, despite all that she’d done for them. It was one thing for a woman to tend to the ills of her own family – both her ‘white family’ and her ‘black family’, as plantation owners called the slaves who lived in their quarters. But my mother had gone beyond that. She worked as a doctor the same way Papa had, and people paid her. Not usually in money, which had become scarce since the war, but in things like chickens and hams. Just the other day, Cyrus Pringle had reshod Magnolia after Mama lanced a boil on his wife’s leg.
Miss Trudi tucked her signed petition back into her reticule and rose to her feet. ‘I thank you for the coffee. Roasted okra seed, was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. You have a lovely way with it. I’ve been using parched corn, but I’ll have to try this. Of all the items that have become so scarce, I can’t decide which I miss most: coffee, wheat flour, or salt.’
‘Oh, definitely the salt,’ said Mama, walking with her to the door. ‘There is no substitute for it. I don’t know how we’re to cure our bacon and hams for the coming winter.’
‘True. I suppose since I don’t raise hogs, I don’t notice it as much. Rowena Walford was telling me that they’re digging up the dirt floor of their smoke house and separating out all the salt that’s dripped on it over the years. It’s quite a laborious process …’
I slipped quietly out the back door. In my experience, women could talk forever about shortages and substitutes. I figured Mama and Trudi Eason were about as different as two women could be. But the war had taught them they had more in common than they might otherwise have realized. They both loved their children and feared for their future.
And they both really, really missed coffee.
That fall, the news of the war grew increasingly worrisome. Yes, Lee had managed to stop the Federals’ latest attempt to take Richmond. But when he tried to take the fight into Federal-held territory, the result was a hideously bloody battle that left tens of thousands wounded or dead. Some folks were calling Sharpsburg; others called it Antietam. Officially it was said to be a draw, but it halted Lee’s advance, and rumor had it the battle also put a stop to the British and French plans to recognize the Confederacy. So it sorta sounded like a defeat to me. These days, it seemed like all we heard was bad news.
Winter came early that year.
There were some years when the hand of winter laid gently upon the Felicianas, when the grass stayed green in the meadows and the last of the leaves fell from the trees only as the new shoots of spring began to show. But not that year.
By November, we had a fire every night and most days, too. We were lucky; we had acres of woodland, and Avery had been busy for months sawing logs and chopping kindling and stacking it in the woodhouse. But I worried about the poor folk in all the towns and cities across the South; what were they doing? How could a soldier’s wife already struggling to feed her hungry children ever afford to buy enough fuel to keep them alive through a cold winter?
And then I awoke one morning to find a light dusting of snow covering the grass and surrounding fields, and ice crystals sparkling in the cold, clear air. It wasn’t unheard of for St Francisville to have snow. But we never had it this early. I was still tugging on a pair of Simon’s old boots when a snowball splatted against my window. I went to throw up the sash and leaned out to find Finn waiting down below.
‘Come on, sleepy head!’ he called up. ‘Me and Castile is fixin’ to go deer huntin’. You want to come, don’t you?’
For a moment, my stomach heaved. But somehow I managed to plaster a sick smile on my face and holler, ‘I’ll be right down.’
We hadn’t been hunting since the Essex’s last, disastrous visit, for Castile had been busy rebuilding his livery stable and putting up a new house. He and Leo had decided to move their establishment up the hill to St Francisville, and bought a stretch of land to the north of Ferdinand Street. But I guess he figured he needed a break.
The snow had brought an unnatural hush to our world and scrubbed the sky a crisp, clear blue. I wore the gloves Mama had knit for my birthday, but the hand gripping my bow soon grew numb, and Finn laughed at me and said my nose was red. I followed behind him and Castile, the powdery snow crunching and squeaking beneath the heavy soles of Simon’s old boots.
I was hoping we wouldn’t find anything, but it wasn’t long before Castile spotted tracks that showed clearly in the fresh snow. We traced them down a ravine and up the other side to an open, snow-filled meadow so beautiful it took my breath. At the edge of a clearing stood a big buck, his head held high, his attention fatally focused on something deep in the wood.
Run, I thought, watching him. Oh, please, please run.
Finn quietly nocked an arrow and then threw me a hard, intense stare. We’d agreed that if we found a deer, Finn and I would both shoot at it. Hunting was becoming serious business; people were already going hungry, and a long, hard winter stretched ahead of us.
I told myself, You have to do this, and eased an arrow from the quiver I wore slung across my back. Yet at the same time, I was still quietly praying, Please run!
I saw Castile nod, and forced myself to hold steady and focus. Finn and I lifted our arrows, eased back our bowstrings, and released them simultaneously.
The two arrows flew across the clearing with a lethal hiss. Finn’s went wide. But mine struck home. The magnificent animal crumpled with a groan.
I guess maybe Finn and Castile could tell how I was feeling, because neither one of them whooped or hollered in triumph the way they would have done if Finn had been the one to bring down the buck. I walked across the meadow to where the deer lay, his hot blood staining and melting the white snow beneath him.
He was beautiful, his eyes a soft, gentle brown, his body sleek and strong. I couldn’t believe I had killed something so grand and noble.
Castile came to stand beside me, his voice quiet. ‘What you do, Amrie, is say a prayer to the deer’s spirit. You thank him for his noble sacrifice, you honor him for his grandeur and his courage, and you wish his soul a speedy journey into a better future.’
I nodded gratefully, unable to speak. My heart felt like someone was searing it with a fiery poker, and tears stung my eyes. But I didn’t cry. Not then.
I saved my tears for my pillow, when I lay alone in the darkness of the night, with a lone wolf howling somewhere in the distance, and soft flakes of new snow whispering against my windowpane.
Twenty-Five
In the middle of December, my Grandmother Dunbar came to stay with us.
It had long been Adelaide Dunbar’s practice every Christmas to descend on one of her surviving children for a visit that lasted until after the first of January. This year, it was our turn. I’d thought for a while she might not come, since we’d all grown leery of leaving our houses empty. When Federal raiding parties came upon an uninhabited house, they were more likely to strip it or burn it. So folks had taken to staying home as much as possible.
But early in December came the news that my Uncle Harley’s new house near Donaldsonville had been torched by the Federals. Harley’s wife, Mandy, and their young son, Wills, had taken refuge with Adelaide at Misty Oaks. Now, most folks might expect Adelaide to decid
e to spend that Christmas at home with her traumatized daughter-in-law and only surviving grandson. But no; this was supposed to be our year, and Adelaide wasn’t about to let little things like a war and Yankee raiding parties interfere with her schedule.
She came to us on a cold, sunny morning, when the dead brown grass in the fields lay in stiffly frozen tufts, and the sky was a clear, crisp blue. She brought along her own servant, a plump, good-natured woman named Chesney. I could never figure out how Chesney had managed to live with my grandmother for more than sixty years and still stay cheerful. Chesney had belonged to Adelaide literally since the day she was born.
It was the practice amongst plantation families to ‘gift’ a slave baby to a young child at birth. The two children would play together while young. Then, slowly, the relationship would shift. The result was a strange dynamic that involved varying degrees of genuine, lifelong affection and carefully hidden resentment. I guess, like anything else, it depended on the personalities of the two people involved. If I’d been Chesney, I’d probably have been tempted to smother Adelaide with a pillow.
But Adelaide was my grandmother, and my affection for her was as real as it was wary and muted. I just didn’t like having her around too long. She always made me feel fidgety and awkward and wanting in ways she never failed to innumerate.
‘Anne-Marie, are those boy’s boots on your feet?’ she demanded as I dutifully reached up to plant the required welcoming peck on her cool cheek.
We were still standing in the central hall, and she’d yet to even remove her bonnet and gloves. Usually she waited until Avery had at least carried her trunks into the guest bedroom before she started in on me. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said bleakly. I’d grown so much that my dress was also shamefully short, but at least she didn’t comment on that.
‘They were Simon’s,’ said Mama. ‘We’re lucky they fit her. You know how impossible shoes are to get. And while she could go barefoot in the summer, it’s too cold now.’