by C. S. Harris
‘Seems to me, the Federals have more’n their fair share.’
‘Perhaps. The thing is, Amrie … War brings out the worst in people. But it can also bring out the best. I know it’s hard, but that’s what we need to stay focused on.’
I’d seen a heap of bad brought out in people by the war, but not so much of what anyone could call ‘good’. I couldn’t say what I knew my mother wanted to hear, so I just kept still. But I did shake my head, and then I wished I hadn’t when I saw her lips part and her chest rise on a painfully indrawn breath.
I knew she worried a lot about the ‘effect’ the war was having on me, for I’d heard her talking about it when she thought I wasn’t around – not just with my Grandmother Adelaide, but with Mahalia and even Castile. ‘It can’t be good,’ she was always saying, ‘to come of age surrounded by so much bitterness and brutality and fear. What sort of future are we raising? Where will it all end?’
‘Amrie …’ She reached out her hand to take mine and squeeze it, tight. ‘I wish … Oh, God, how I wish this would all be over.’
‘Folks are saying there’s a peace movement up North. That Ohio and Illinois and California are talkin’ about seceding, too. That Lincoln is gonna start up a draft, and lots of folks are real mad about it. Maybe he’ll be forced to make peace.’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
But I knew she didn’t believe it. And the truth was, I didn’t believe it myself.
We lost Priebus a few days later. Mama said his heart gave out and he just slipped away peacefully in his sleep. I figured that sounded like a good way to go. I was becoming only too familiar with how horrible death could be.
It seemed as if every day brought us new nightmarish tales of senseless cruelties and unimaginable horrors. Of puppies torn from the arms of screaming children, their heads bashed in with rifle butts. Of a four-year-old girl dragged from her home and savaged by a band of marauding soldiers. Of villages like Ponchatoula, ravaged by a two-day orgy of pillage and plunder that sounded like something out of the darkest Middle Ages. We lived in a vortex of mounting terror, of atrocity followed by atrocity, until a kind of numbness set in. I suppose the only way to cope with a world gone mad is to pretend that madness is normal. The problem is, when that happens, your world tilts, distorts. And I’m not sure you can ever make it right again.
Rather than spillikins and hopscotch, children now played ‘military hospital’. They wrapped ‘bandages’ around their eyes and strapped up one bent leg so that they could hobble around on a crutch like a crippled soldier. They held mock court-martials and executed dolls by firing squad, then buried the ‘dead’ with military honors. They played ‘run the blockade’, and built stick towns, only to demolish them with a fierce artillery fire of pinecones and dirt clods that left nothing but a pile of rubble.
But these days, only the youngest children had time to play. Even if Horst Fischer had never gone off to enlist, I doubt many would have been able to attend school. My days were filled with weeding the fields and helping Mahalia wash, or splitting kindling and hauling water now that Priebus was gone. Sometimes I still managed to steal an hour or two to curl up on my window seat with the likes of Apollonius or Rousseau. But those occasions were becoming more and more rare.
And then, in May, came the news that the Federals under General Grant were encircling and laying siege to Vicksburg. Shelled night and day, the women and children of the town took refuge in caves they dug out of the earth of the hillside. When food grew scarce, they started eating mules and dandelions. And when even those disappeared, they turned to rats, pets, and, it was whispered, their own dead.
Those of us with loved ones trapped in the city could only wait.
And pray.
Thirty
So much had happened in our lives lately that I rarely thought of the golden-haired infantry captain who had taken my necklace that long ago spring day on the sunlit levees of Bayou Sara. But in that May of 1863, he rode back into my world once more. And this time, the results would be more horrible than I could ever have imagined.
With all the menfolk off to war, there weren’t many babies being born around St Francisville any more. Plenty of folks were dying, though. Mama said the war was killing them, that grief, worry, and fear can be as deadly in their own way as bullets and shells. It didn’t make much sense to me, but there was no denying that most every day brought word of someone dying – not just soldiers, but the wives, children, sisters, and aged parents they’d left behind, too. Once, we’d looked forward to letters. Now, I noticed Mama would tense every time she opened one, for they always seemed to contain news of another cousin or dear friend lost. These days, everyone we knew was in mourning.
So when Amelia Ferguson gave birth to a baby boy that May, it put a rare smile on the face of most everybody in town. Her husband, Micajah, had been home the previous year on a long medical furlough after almost losing an arm at Shiloh, and she named the boy Theodore, because she said he was a gift from God. Just a few days after the child was born, we heard Micajah Ferguson had been shot and killed while on sentry duty up at Vicksburg. Folks shook their heads and sighed, and agreed it was a sad thing, although at least Miss Amelia had her dear sweet babe to comfort her.
Problem was, Micajah Ferguson’s death devastated his young wife. Her milk dried up, and little Theodore, who’d once been so hale and rosy-cheeked, turned pale and sickly and failed to thrive. Mama said she thought Theodore’s tummy might not like the cow’s milk Amelia Ferguson was now feeding him. I figured Miss Amelia was lucky she still had her cow. But Mama suggested Miss Amelia try feeding her little boy with Flower’s milk, and he started getting better.
It became my job to carry a crock of goat’s milk to the Ferguson place every morning and evening. The Fergusons farmed a small spread some three miles up the road from our house, which meant I was doing a lot of walking. I asked my mother why we couldn’t just let Amelia Ferguson keep Flower for a few months. But Mama said if we did, Miss Amelia’d need to do the milking herself, and she wasn’t sure she was up to that.
I had to agree Flower wasn’t easy to milk. But I figured Miss Amelia could get the hang of it soon enough if she tried. I’d yet to learn just how paralyzing grief can sometimes be.
But it didn’t take me more than a few days to realize that something was seriously wrong with Miss Amelia. Not in her body, but in her mind and her heart. Often times I’d come and find her sitting in a dark room, her hands resting palm up in her lap, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular.
She wouldn’t even get up out of her chair, just say, ‘Set it over there, Amrie. Thank you kindly.’
The empty crock from my last visit would be unwashed. And as the days passed, I noticed the dust thickening on her tabletops, the weeds growing up beneath the azaleas and gardenias in her garden beds. Once, she’d been a plump, pretty little thing, with fine black hair and merry blue eyes. Now her hair hung in a matted mess down her back, and she grew thinner and thinner until I began to wonder if she was even eating. But what scared me even more were her eyes. It was like they were dead.
I worried for a time that maybe she was neglecting her baby the same way she was neglecting her house and herself. Then I realized the little boy was the only thing she was taking care of – almost obsessively so.
I didn’t particularly mind the trek out there on fine mornings, when the sun shone golden and birds sang in the misty willows and moss-draped oaks. But I hated the driving rains that came this time of year. And as May wore on, the afternoons got increasingly hot. Miss Amelia never invited me to sit and rest, or offered me anything to drink before I headed home again, so I often found myself dragging before I made it back to our house.
Halfway between the Ferguson place and ours lay Belle Grove, a fine, white-pillared Greek revival plantation house that belonged to Winston and Gussie Holt. Mr Winston, like Papa, was off with the army in Virginia, leaving Miss Gussie alone with some one hundred and ninety slaves. I knew Miss Gus
sie was nervous about it, because one time when I was in St Francisville, I’d heard her talking about it with Rowena Walford.
‘I just can’t rest easy at night, knowing they’re out there,’ Miss Gussie said in a low voice as the two women walked slowly through the churchyard. ‘The slaves, I mean. Every time I see a shadow on my bedroom wall or hear the creak of the house settling around me, I think it’s them, coming to murder me in my bed. Just like those Frenchmen they killed down at German Coast.’
It had been more than fifty years since the German Coast slave uprising killed two white men down by New Orleans. But it still haunted folks, reminding them that the horrors of Nat Turner’s far bloodier rampage or John Brown’s more recent raid could also happen here. And in places like the Felicianas, where slaves outnumbered whites and free people of color by more than four to one, a lot of womenfolk were nervous about all the men going off to war.
Rowena Walford said calmly, ‘I don’t think you need to be afraid, Gussie.’
Gussie Holt glanced over at her, her fine-boned features pinched into an expression somewhere between admiration and disbelief.
Miss Gussie was a striking woman in her late twenties, tall and slender, with pretty hair the color of peaches and lovely pale skin faintly dusted with cinnamon across the high bridge of her nose. She said, ‘You mean to say you’re not? Afraid, I mean.’
‘No, I’m not.’ A slight frown knit Miss Rowena’s normally smooth forehead. ‘Well, to be sure, I do sometimes worry about roving bands of runaways from other plantations. But I don’t have any concerns about our own black family, if that’s what you mean. They’re happy.’
I thought it a funny thing for her to say, given that I’d heard Bon Silence was losing field hands nearly every week.
But that argument obviously didn’t occur to Gussie Holt. She gnawed one side of her lower lip between her teeth. ‘But do you think they’re really happy, Rowena?’
Miss Rowena gave a merry, tinkling laugh that showed her dimples. ‘Of course they’re happy, Gussie! Why wouldn’t they be? They’re well fed and clothed, with a snug roof over their heads. And Lord knows they don’t work very hard. We call the doctor for them when they’re sick, and when they get too old to work, we keep taking care of them until they die. I’ve no doubt there’s many a poor Irish immigrant who’d be more than happy to trade places with them.’
‘You think so, Rowena?’
Miss Rowena gave another laugh, although this one was more scornful than merry. ‘For a full belly and a warm place to eat? I know so.’
Miss Gussie shook her head. ‘Not me. I’d rather starve in a ditch than be a slave. I can’t even imagine it. And if someone did enslave me, I think I’d want to slit their throat and gouge out their eyes.’
Miss Rowena screwed up her face in a grimace of mock horror. ‘Well, that’s your problem right there, Gussie. The thing of it is, you’ve got to understand that the Irish and the Africans are different from us. They don’t have the same wants, needs, or feelings we do. They’re happy just to go along to get along.’
Miss Gussie kept quiet. But I could tell by the troubled look on her face that she was still unconvinced. After a moment she said, her voice throbbing with barely suppression emotion, ‘I wish that abominable, “peculiar institution” had never been brought to this land.’
Miss Rowena looked unperturbed. ‘Slavery is as old as the Bible, Gussie. It was instituted by God for the good of His weaker creatures.’
By ‘His weaker creatures’, I guessed Miss Rowena meant the men and women who toiled in her cotton and sugar cane fields, and in her house. People like Josephine and Calliope. That made me think about Leo, and how Rowena Walford had refused to sell him Josephine, and I wondered how I could have been so wrong about someone I’d once thought nice and charming.
‘And really, Anne-Marie,’ said Miss Rowena without changing the level of her voice or even looking up, ‘didn’t your mama teach you not to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?’
I gave a guilty start and felt my cheeks flame hot. It went against everything I’d been taught about proper manners, not to answer her with a politely murmured, Yes, ma’am. But if I did, I’d be admitting that I was listening to them.
So I just ducked my head like a guilty coward and walked away.
I was aware of Miss Rowena’s softly melodic laughter, following me. But when I threw a quick, surreptitious glance back at them, I saw Miss Gussie looking after me, an indescribable expression on her pale, lovely face.
It was one afternoon when I was walking home from Miss Amelia’s house, my empty crock tucked awkwardly under one arm, that I spotted Miss Gussie standing in the small walled graveyard that lay not far from Belle Grove’s gateway. She had her head bowed, her thoughts obviously far, far away. I’d heard that she’d birthed three babes. But they were all buried in that shady plot, and as I drew closer, I could see the small bouquets of fresh pink rosebuds and white lilies that rested against each simple limestone marker.
Then she looked up, her face softening into a smile when she saw me. I would have kept walking, but she waved and called out to me, so I stopped.
‘Amrie,’ she said, walking toward me, ‘I’ve seen you passing a few times. Tell me, how is Amelia’s little boy?’
I turned into the drive to meet her, awkwardly aware of the time I’d been caught eavesdropping on her conversation with Rowena Walford. ‘He’s perkin’ up right fine,’ I said. ‘Reckon the goat’s milk was what he needed all along.’
She nodded and looked pleased, although there was a wistful quality to her smile that made me think of the three small graves behind her. She said, ‘You look hot, child. Come on up to the house and I’ll get Aunt Selma to fetch you a nice cool glass of lemonade.’
I shifted the smelly empty crock to my other arm. ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am. But I can’t impose on you like that.’
‘Nonsense. I won’t take no for an answer. You must come up to the house every afternoon on your way home and get a drink. I insist on it.’
And so I did. Not just because I was almost always thirsty, but because it didn’t take me long to figure out that Miss Gussie was as lonely as all get out. She lived all by herself in that great, big house, just her and a couple hundred people whose dark skin – and the seething hatred she imagined it hid – terrified her. She always came and sat with me on the gallery while I drank my lemonade, and we’d talk about the weather, and the riot of brilliantly colored roses blooming in her garden, and the latest news from the war.
But never once did she broach the subject I’d heard her discussing with Rowena Walford that day.
‘Have you heard anything from your Papa since Chancellorville?’ she asked one glorious, sunlit afternoon, when the watermelons were ripening in the fields, and wild flox and primroses splashed the meadows with muted shades of blue and yellow.
I shook my head, trying to ignore the painful twist in my stomach. By then, we’d all heard of the great battle that had raged for over a week in Virginia, between General Lee and a Federal army twice his size. It was a sorely needed victory for our side, and everyone was still jubilant about it. But we knew Papa’s battalion had been involved and that the casualties had been high. Until we heard he was safe, it was hard to join in the celebrations.
She said, ‘Rumor is, Stonewall Jackson has been wounded – grievously so. If he dies, I fear this triumph may prove a hollow one.’
‘He can’t die,’ I said sharply – more sharply than I’d intended. And I realized I was doing it again – imagining that I could somehow control the march of fate by the things I said or even thought.
The shadows were already deepening beneath the trees, the heat bleeding slowly from the day. I drained my glass and carefully set it on the wickerwork table beside my chair. ‘Thank you kindly for the lemonade, Miss Gussie.’
She came with me to the top of the steps, then stood there watching me, still vaguely smiling, as I skipped down the drive to the lan
e. For some reason I could not have explained, I stopped at the long, sweeping curve flanked by a row of brilliant red rambling roses, and looked back to give her a wave.
Still smiling, she raised one hand in farewell. I try hard to remember her like that.
Rather than the way I found her the following morning.
Thirty-One
The next day dawned gray and cloudy, with wispy skeins of mist that drifted through the oak and willow trees lining the lane. I kept the heavy, full milk crock tucked up under one arm as I walked, my gaze on the lightning veining the dark, swollen storm bank that hung over the river. By the time I reached the Ferguson place, a fierce wind was whipping the branches of the trees overhead, and the first drops of rain had begun to fall, striking the giant leaves of the magnolias that flanked the front walk and pattering in the dust.
I found Miss Amelia in the front parlor, sitting in the same chair beside the empty hearth where I’d left her the afternoon before, her dark eyes hauntingly vacant as she stared at the thrashing shadows on the far wall. Lately I’d started wondering if she slept in that chair.
‘Mornin’, Miss Amelia,’ I said gaily, going to change out the crocks. Little Theodore was in his basket by the front window. I stopped to coo at him, and he wiggled with what I fancied was delight. He always had on fresh clothes, so I guessed him mama must get up out of her chair at some point to take care of him. But there was a sour smell about the place that I figured couldn’t be good for either of them.
I said, ‘How ’bout I help you ’round the place a bit this mornin’, Miss Amelia? It’s fixin’ to rain something fierce out there, so I may as well do something while I’m waitin’ for it to blow over.’
She didn’t say anything. But she didn’t tell me not to, either. So I swept the dried leaves out of the central hall and threw open all the doors to the drumming rain, letting the warm, fresh wind blow through the house. I picked up things as best I could, and found a rag to dust. Then I dashed out to the kitchen and found some food I brought to her on a plate I washed. The kitchen made me gag, for Miss Amelia’s Jenny had run off late in February, and it didn’t look to me as if Miss Amelia had done anything out there since word came of Micajah Ferguson’s death. I wondered what she’d been eating – or if she even was.