Good Time Coming

by C. S. Harris

  Her voice trailed away, but I knew what she’d been about to say. Lately more and more folks were despairing of ever living to see the war’s end. And even those who held out hope that peace might still come with independence knew it would never be greeted with celebrations. Not now. There’d been too much suffering, too many deaths for peace to be greeted with joyous fetes.

  We gathered in the parlor and dining room, everyone talking at once, although for some reason I didn’t seem to mind it anymore. Mahalia and I walked around with pitchers of blackberry tea we’d cooled in the old dairy beneath the cistern. Most of the ladies had brought their own tin cups or gourds, because we all knew the Yankees took a fiendish delight in breaking glasses, china, and crockery. Few folks had enough left to serve a crowd.

  I heard Trudi Easton say to Mama, ‘I wrote to Captain Easton again, trying to impress upon him the importance of not allowing a second year to pass without a teacher for the area’s children. But he still refuses to countenance the thought of allowing me to take up the position.’

  I glanced over at her. These days, Miss Trudi was practically as skinny as that soldier we’d taken in after Port Hudson. She wore a faded brown homespun dress darned at the hem and patched at the elbows, and as she talked, I saw her put up one hand to her throat, still reflexively trying to touch the heart-shaped crystal containing the lock of Captain Easton’s hair. Then she must have remembered it was gone, because her hand slid away to grip the arm of her chair.

  Mama had decided in the end that it was better not to return the locket to her. I still thought it was cruel, but I acknowledged Mama probably understood a woman like Miss Trudi better’n me. Personally, I couldn’t begin to fathom how any woman could remain so attached to a man who’d rather see his wife and children starve than have her shame him by working outside the home.

  ‘Did you hear about Charlotte Salinger’s husband, Bayard?’ Rowena Walford was saying. Like Miss Trudi, Miss Rowena was wearing homespun, but her dress looked almost new and was beautifully made, with mandarin sleeves and a double skirt. Miss Rowena always contrived to look elegant, even in homespun.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the Widow Carlyle. ‘Don’t tell me Bayard is dead, too.’ Charlotte Salinger had already lost three brothers and two sons to the war.

  Miss Rowena nodded, her pretty face puckering with empathy. ‘At Manassas Gap. I was with her when Bayard’s boy, Jeremiah, came home. Brought her Bayard’s sword and his bloody, ripped uniform, all folded up. Handed them to her along with the letter Bayard had written the night before he was killed, and a note from one of Bayard’s comrades. And then you know what he did? He just turned around and walked off without so much as a by-your-leave.’

  I thought it an incredibly noble, selfless thing for Jeremiah to have done, to have hazarded the long journey from Virginia to Louisiana simply to return a dead man’s effects to his widow. He could so easily have thrown them away and headed north to freedom. But I guess Rowena Walford didn’t look at it that way.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ said Adelaide, rising to her feet. ‘Who’d like to play first?’

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll do it,’ said Rowena, her dimples peeping as she rose to her feet with a clutch of sheet music she’d brought along. ‘Y’all know I’m not the deftest hand, but I’ll try to make up with enthusiasm for what I lack in technical skill.’

  She was being modest, of course; Rowena Walford played the pianoforte with the same exquisite grace she did everything. Her daughter Laura was with her, looking unusually quiet and subdued, and went to sit beside her mother and turn the pages for her. I’d found these days that I didn’t mind Laura the way I once had. In fact, I almost felt sorry for her, although I couldn’t quite figure out why. I think it had something to do with her mother, who I was learning wasn’t nearly as charming or sweet as I’d once thought.

  Rowena started out with songs that made us laugh, like ‘Goober Peas’ and ‘Mister, Where’s Your Mule?’ But it wasn’t long before we veered toward the sentimental favorites, like ‘Lorena’ and ‘Aura Lee’, the songs that seemed to open our hearts and bleed out the pain and loss and yearning we all felt. We sang ‘The Vacant Chair’ and I heard voices catch, saw the glint of silent tears quickly wiped away.

  Margaret Mason had brought along her guitar, and Delia Stocking came clutching her flute, even though it was a bit bent from having been tossed out an upstairs window in the last Yankee raid. A few of the other women took their turns at the piano. Then Adelaide settled on the bench, her back straight, her own eyes enviably dry, her still agile fingers gliding over the keys as she began to play ‘There’s a Good Time Coming, Boys’.

  I realized Laura Walford was standing next to me and felt her hand reach out to clutch mine as we sang, ‘“War in all men’s eyes shall be a monster of iniquity, in the good time coming …”’

  We sang as if by our voices we could somehow lift each other up and carry each other forward into the increasingly harsh and terrifying future that loomed before us.

  ‘“Nations shall not quarrel then, to prove which is the stronger …”’

  I wanted so desperately to believe it was possible, to believe that no women or children anywhere would ever again suffer what we were enduring.

  ‘“Nor slaughter men for glory’s sake …”’

  Was it possible? In that one moment, I fervently believed it could be.

  ‘“Wait a little longer.”’

  Forty-Four

  Early one morning in mid-September, I awoke to the soft thump of what I groggily realized were cautious footsteps on the gallery below.

  I lay still for a moment, listening to someone’s quick retreat back down the front steps. When he hit the drive, he broke into a run.

  I slipped from my bed, the cool damp air nipping at my bare legs and feet as I crossed to the dormer window. The moss draped live oaks and pecans in the yard were hazy with mist turned a glowing pink by the rising sun. All looked still and quiet. But I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

  Someone had been there.

  I threw on my clothes and crept downstairs to open the front door. A grubby, battered envelope slipped from where it had been thrust into the crack of the door to land at my feet.

  My breath caught in my throat. I bent to pick up the message, my mind leaping back to another, half-forgotten morning when someone had hung a banner crudely lettered with the words TRAITORS LIVE HERE beside our front gate. Had that unknown enemy returned? Then I saw the familiar, bold hand of the address.

  It was a letter from Uncle Bo.

  I peered uselessly into the drifting white mist. But whoever had brought the letter was long gone. I understood, now, why they hadn’t wanted to be seen and recognized.

  I heard my mother’s door open. ‘What is it, Amrie?’ she whispered.

  I held the letter out to her, and she read it aloud.

  My dearest Kate and Amrie,

  I’ve found a way I may be able to get this to you, so I’m seizing the chance.

  I think of y’all constantly, worrying about what must be happening now that Port Hudson and Vicksburg have fallen. I’ve tried to get word of Em, Hannah, and Galen, but to no avail. The stories coming out of Louisiana these days remind me of the tales I read as a boy about the Thirty Years War. Who would have thought we’d come to this in our supposedly enlightened age? Lately, I’ve started thinking about requesting a transfer out West someplace. Not good for the career, I know. But …

  I understand you’ve heard about Henley. I still find it hard to believe he’s gone. I always thought he was the finest of us Dunbar boys – tall and handsome, kind-hearted, brilliant at everything he ever turned his hand to. And now he’s just … dead. I’ve had no news of Tate for months, but I did run into a prisoner from Alabama the other day who told me Anton was well, at least as of early August.

  I’ll spare you the usual soldiers’ complaints about the food and weather. I haven’t tried to write Mother, for I know she doesn’t want to hear from me. I j
ust wish there was some way for me to tell her that I love her. I hope that someday the breach between us can be healed.

  Your ever-loving brother and uncle,

  Bo

  Mama had just reached the letter’s end when Adelaide appeared. ‘Who is that from?’ she demanded with a sharpness that told me she already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

  ‘It’s from Bo.’ Mama hesitated, then held out the closely covered pages. ‘He’s well and sends you his love.’

  ‘Bo Dunbar has been dead to me for over two years now,’ said Adelaide, and walked back into her room to close the door behind her with a snap.

  I didn’t understand how any mother could so repudiate her own son simply because of a difficult choice he’d been forced to make. But Adelaide Dunbar was a hard woman – far harder than I figured I could ever be. I veered back and forth between thinking that was a good thing and worrying that maybe it was just another of my many failings.

  Some hours later I was in the garden, cutting a bouquet of late-blooming roses and white chrysanthemums when I came upon her sitting on a weathered bench in the shade of the peach tree. I drew up awkwardly, not knowing what to say, that morning’s incident still oppressively heavy on my heart.

  But my grandmother had always dealt with familial unpleasantnesses by acting as if they did not exist. She looked at me from under the wide brim of her palmetto hat and said, ‘Good afternoon, Anne-Marie. That’s a lovely bouquet.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Don’t mumble, Anne-Marie. It’s a most unattractive habit.’ She nodded to the flowers in my hand. ‘Who are they for?’

  ‘I thought maybe I’d put ’em on Leo’s grave.’

  She looked at me steadily for a moment, her brows twitching together into a frown. ‘You mean, Leo Boudreau? I didn’t know he’d died.’

  I thought about telling her how Leo had died, then decided that was not a good idea. So I just said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She gazed off across the sunlit garden to where a squirrel was scampering along the low branch of a pecan tree. ‘He was always a clever boy. But stubborn and sullen, even as a small child.’

  I stared at her, not understanding, or maybe simply not wanting to understand what she was saying. ‘You knew Leo when he was little? How?’

  She brought her gaze back to my face. ‘He was born at Misty Oaks. I’m surprised no one ever told you. He was part of your mother’s inheritance.’

  I could hear my ears ringing, so that my own voice sounded as if it were coming from a long ways off when I said, ‘And Castile? You owned Castile?’

  A breeze had kicked up, shifting the branches of the peach tree overhead and slanting a palm-patterned speckling of sunlight across her aged face. ‘Yes.’

  AD. I should have known, of course. Should have been able to put it all together long ago. But I hadn’t.

  Understanding slammed into me, and I felt a rage explode within me, entwined with a horror that churned my stomach and stole my breath. ‘The initials on Castile’s cheeks … They’re yours, aren’t they? Adelaide Dunbar. You branded him. My God, how could you do that?’ I backed away from her, shaking my head, not wanting to believe that someone I loved, my own grandmother, could have perpetrated a cruelty that had repulsed and enraged me for as long as I had been old enough to comprehend it.

  She rose calmly to her feet, her face devoid of all expression. ‘Don’t you presume to judge me, young lady.’

  ‘How could you?’ I cried. The roses tumbled from my grasp as I whirled to run blindly, my tears transforming my world into a blur of blue and green and brown.

  ‘Anne-Marie, you come back here. Anne-Marie? Anne-Marie.’

  When Simon and I were little, a nasty September storm brought down a big old oak tree in the gully behind our house, partially damming the shallow stream and causing enough of an eddy that it hollowed out what we fancied we could turn into something far grander. Hauling in buckets of old bricks from the crumbling foundation of an abandoned mill, we did our best to supplement nature. The resulting pool was never very deep or wide, but when the stream was running well, it was enough to sit in and cool off after a hard day’s work or play, surrounded by a thicket of wild grapes and enchanter’s nightshade and native azalea.

  These days, I mostly came here to sit on the log and watch the water trickle its way through our old brick dam. The light that afternoon was soft and golden in a way that told of the coming end of summer. And for one, intense moment, I missed Simon so much it hurt. Then I heard a soft rustle and felt a wet nose pushing against my hand.

  ‘Hey, Checkers.’ I looped my arm around his neck and drew his sun-warmed body close. ‘How’d you find me? Hmmm?’

  ‘I suspect he knows you better than any of us,’ said my mother, inching her way down the steep path into the gully.

  I stared out over the sun-dappled water. ‘I won’t apologize to her, if that’s why you’re here.’

  She came to settle beside me on the log. She was silent for a moment, her gaze, like mine, on the softly rippling water. ‘We should have told you long ago. I realize that now. I’m sorry.’

  I couldn’t look at her. ‘I can’t believe you kept it from me all these years. All of you! You and Papa. Castile and Leo. Even Mahalia and Priebus. Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t deliberate, at first. But we knew how you felt about the brands, and once we realized you didn’t know who Castile had belonged to … It just seemed best.’

  ‘Best? How could you ever have believed that?’

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head, as if the answer now eluded her, too.

  I picked at the pealing bark beside me. ‘Why did she tell me herself, now?’

  ‘She didn’t realize we’d kept the truth from you. But you know what she’s like. She would never have kept silent, anyway. She blames me for keeping it from you all these years, and to tell the truth, I think now that she’s right.’

  Checkers nudged me again, and I let my hand trail down his back. ‘I don’t understand how she could do something so cruel. So … evil.’

  My mother eased out a long, heavy breath. ‘We like to think of evil as something that exists outside of us – an entity the church personifies as the devil. But I’ve never been able to believe that. I think the potential for evil is inside of us – inside all of us. Our lives are a constant struggle not to give way to it.’

  I turned my head to look at her. ‘You would never do something like that!’

  ‘I like to think I wouldn’t. But do I know that? No. I don’t think anyone ever really knows what they’re capable of – good or bad – until life thrusts them into a situation where they need to make hard choices. Even then, I suspect most folks are very good at justifying the evil they do, convincing themselves it either wasn’t that bad, or they had a good reason for doing the awful things they did. That’s why Lincoln and his generals and soldiers can destroy entire cities and still flatter themselves they’re serving a noble cause. How else can anyone unblinkingly kill half a million people and still think they’re doing God’s work?’ she huffed a soft, bitter laugh. ‘“His truth is marching on.”’

  ‘You say that as if it somehow excuses what Grandma did. Well, it doesn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to imply that it does, Amrie. Only that I don’t think there’s a person alive who hasn’t at some point done something reprehensible, something despicable, something they’d be amongst the first to condemn in another. It’s one of the most pernicious aspects of slavery and war; both institutions remove the restraints under which we normally operate. I don’t think there are many who can be trusted not to abuse that kind of situation.’

  ‘She branded him!’

  I saw my mother’s nostrils flare on an indrawn breath. ‘Amrie … She is today the same person you’ve always known and loved: stubborn and opinionated, strong-willed and caustic, judgmental and unforgiving, and at times ruthless and intolerant. You said this morning you couldn’t u
nderstand how she turned away from Uncle Bo when he chose to fight for the Union. Yet isn’t that what you’re doing now? Turning away from her for a choice she made?’

  ‘They’re not the same at all! Uncle Bo thinks what he is doing is right and honorable. What she did was just mean and nasty!’

  My mother rested one hand on Checker’s back. ‘Those dark impulses lurk within all of us, Amrie. All of us. For one hideous, irretrievable moment, she gave way to them. That doesn’t mean she is evil.’

  I started to say, Not in me! That kind of capacity for darkness doesn’t live within me! Then I remembered the murderous rage that had thrummed through me as I eased back my bowstring and sent an arrow flying into Gabriel Dupont’s blue-uniformed back. And I knew then that I was my grandmother’s granddaughter, after all.

  Adelaide Dunbar might have cruelly branded a man. But I had killed one. Without hesitation or remorse.

  I was kneeling beside Leo’s grave when Castile found me.

  The raw, bare earth was only just beginning to settle, beaten down by the late-summer rains and the inexorable passage of time. Soon the dirt would sink, the grass would grow, and it would be as if Leo had never lived. Or died.

  Castile settled cross-legged in the grass opposite me, and I was reminded of a time when Finn had sat thus on the far side of Simon’s grave.

  He said, ‘I done talked to yor momma.’

  I pulled aimlessly at the grass beside me with one hand. I didn’t say anything, and after a moment, he went on.

  ‘Most folks, they keeps their heads down and goes along to get along. Whatever life hands them, they just accepts it and tries to make the best of whatever bad lot they been dealt. But some of us, we’re always kickin’ against reality, even when it hurts us way more’n it hurts anybody else. That’s just the way we is made and we can’t be no different.’

  I shook my head, not understanding. ‘What’re you sayin’, Castile?’

  ‘I was born a slave, just like my momma and daddy. But I wasn’t gonna be like them – I wasn’t gonna just accept it. I was thirteen years old the first time I run away. Made it maybe ten miles before they caught me and brung me back. I had no idea where I was goin’. I was just goin’ away.