Father unto Many Sons

by Rod Miller

  Richard thought a moment, said, “You want us to bring back any of our other belongings?”

  “There ain’t but the two mules. With a pair of you riding double or taking turns walking, there won’t be no way to pack much of anything. ’Less you-all want to walk.”

  “I figured we’d take the wagon.”

  “No. It would only slow you down. It’s nigh on to 200 miles back there by my reckoning. Besides, after all this time there won’t be much of anything left at the place anyways.”

  It did not take the boys long to pack—just a matter of rolling up a blanket each. Sarah wept as they mounted up, not only for their leaving, but for their leaving empty-handed with bellies mostly empty as well. She muttered under her breath and wiped away tears with the hem of her apron again.

  “You ought to make Little Rock in three, four days,” Lee said. “You’ll strike the Military Road there. Just follow along and it’ll take you right on to the Mississippi opposite Memphis. Another week ought to do it. You-all couldn’t get lost if you tried.”

  Lee led Richard’s mule apart from the other and handed him his Kentucky rifle, powder horn, and shot pouch. Then, the father whispered some final instructions to his eldest son.

  Richard jerked upright and looked wide-eyed at his father. Lee slapped the mule on the hip and Richard craned his neck, gaze fixed on his father as his mount plodded out of the clearing and into the woods with the mule carrying Melvin and Abel trailing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Juice dripped down Richard’s chin and congealed in his scraggly beard as he gnawed on a hunk of turkey. Charred on the outside, the meat inside the black crust was all but raw. Disgust, mixed with the grease on his face, did not abate his attack on the double handful of fowl.

  “Damn. This bird ain’t hardly fit to eat,” he said between savaging the meat and bones. “You ain’t much of a cook, Mel.”

  His younger brother wiped his mouth with a shirt sleeve. “Don’t seem to be slowin’ you down none.”

  “A man’s gotta eat. But it does make you miss Ma’s acorn mush.”

  Mel winced, said, “Abel, what do you think?”

  “It ain’t half bad,” the boy said around a mouthful of meat.

  “What about the other half?”

  Abel chewed and swallowed. “Can’t say. Rich blowed that half of the bird plumb away.”

  “At least I got him. Otherwise we’d be goin’ hungry again.”

  Abel ripped off another mouthful of meat and chewed for a moment. “You let me have Pa’s rifle, I’d a made a head shot and saved all the meat.”

  Richard snorted. “Why should I give it to you? You ain’t but a kid. Besides, Pa trusted that rifle to me.”

  “Aw, c’mon Rich. You know I’m a better shot than you.” Abel wiped his greasy fingers on his pants legs. “Give me the gun and in the morning I’ll go get us a deer. Be a lot more filling than a turkey.”

  “I been lookin’ to pot a deer for days and ain’t seen nothing but tracks.”

  “The thing is, Rich, you can’t expect no deer to walk out on the road. You got to go where they are ’cause them deer sure ain’t coming to find you.”

  The brothers said nothing more and were soon rolled in their blankets. Food had been scarce since riding away from the family camp—not that it had been in any abundance there. From time to time the trio had stopped at farmsteads and villages along the way, offering labor in exchange for food. But work was hard to come by, and the occasional gift of a loaf of bread or batch of corn dodgers or other small generosity was all that resulted from their efforts.

  Richard wasn’t awake enough to wipe the sleep from his eyes when a distant shot sat him upright. Melvin was still a blanket-covered lump. Abel’s rumpled blanket was the only sign of the boy.

  “Mel!”

  Melvin scrambled to his feet, staggering in a crouched circle, squinting into the deep gray of the early dawn. “What is it? What?”

  “Abel’s gone. So’s Pa’s rifle. I heard a shot.”

  Melvin dropped to the ground. “Good hell, Rich. That’s all? You liked to scared me to death yelling like that. He probably went off to get us a deer, like he said.”

  “The kid ain’t got no right. Pa trusted that rifle to me.”

  Melvin rolled in his blanket, his back to his older brother. “Shut up, Rich. Hunger’ll drive a man to do desperate things. He’ll be back. And unless I miss my guess he’ll bring in some camp meat.”

  Abel walked into camp with the first rays of the sun, a young whitetail doe wrapped over his shoulders like a stole. He dropped the deer, then unslung the powder horn and shot pouch and, with the rifle, handed them to Richard.

  “Mel!”

  Again, the middle brother bolted upright. “What? What is it?” he said, eyes darting.

  “Wake up. And calm down,” Richard said. “See what you can do about dressing out this deer. Looks like we’ll be eatin’ good for a few days.” With a sharp look at Abel, he leaned the rifle against a tree and threaded the horn and pouch sling over the stub of a broken limb, then stirred up the coals of last night’s fire, tossed on some wood and sat staring into the growing flames.

  The Pate boys spent the day portioning out the deer and were back on the Military Road the next morning with full stomachs and pockets full of strips of smoked venison. They considered the day spent gorging themselves on fresh meat and letting the remnants cure over a smoky fire as anything but wasted.

  Abel rode alone this day, with Richard and Melvin taking their turn riding double.

  “We ought to be getting back to Shelby County tomorrow or the day after, oughtn’t we?” Melvin said.

  “I reckon. Why?”

  “You think Uncle Ben will give us them books Pa wants?”

  “Won’t know till we ask.”

  “What if he won’t?”

  Richard let the question lie for a few minutes. “Well, if he don’t, Pa told me a way to convince him.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Ain’t sayin’. Pa said to keep it to myself till the time comes.”

  The mule stopped short. Richard righted himself in the saddle to see Abel sitting his mule, sideways in the road.

  “ ‘The hell you stopping for, Abel?”

  “Figured to give these mules a blow. We’ve been riding a while.”

  “I reckon that’s all right. Next time, you ask. It ain’t up to you to be makin’ the decisions for this outfit.”

  Melvin slid off the back of the mule and squatted against a tree in the shade. Richard dismounted, handed the reins to Abel and followed. “Pull the bits so’s they can graze.”

  Abel did so and joined his brothers.

  “Seems to me,” Melvin said, “Pa’s sent us on a fool’s errand.”

  Abel perked up. “How’s that?”

  “Ain’t no guarantee Uncle Ben’ll give us them books. And according to what Rich says, Pa don’t think so either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tell him, Rich.”

  Richard cleared his throat, thought a minute, said, “Well, Pa says if Uncle Ben won’t part with that Bible and daybook, I was to fetch something from our place that might change his mind. So, Mel might be right. Pa’s got his doubts, and that means all this could be nothing more than another one of his crazy notions.”

  “Pa wouldn’t do that!”

  Richard laughed. “The hell you say. Look at us. We been a couple months now wandering through the woods livin’ on little more than sunshine and water. We had us a good life in Shelby County—cropland, a few head of cattle, money enough for our needs.” Richard sighed. “Left it all behind on account of one of Pa’s foolish whims.

  Abel sprung to his feet. “Don’t you talk about our Pa that way!”

  “I swear, Abel, the man’s at least half crazy. You just can’t see it.”

  Abel balled his fists and went after Richard. Before he took a second step, Melvin swiped a leg and spilled the boy to the ground. �
�Calm down, Abel. I know you think Pa can’t do no wrong, but it ain’t so. Even Ma knows it.”

  Abel rolled over and sat up, wiping forest duff and litter from his palms. “It don’t matter. He’s still our Pa. And we need to follow his lead.”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that,” Richard said. “I’ve went along up till now. But I ain’t makin’ no promises about how much longer I will.”

  Abel stood, brushed off his shirtfront and pants legs and stalked off to the mules, slid the bit into the mouth of his mount, swung into the saddle and headed off down the trace toward Memphis.

  His brothers took their time following.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Abel smelled the river coming for miles. Knowing their destination was near, the brothers rode on into the night. Save ephemeral reflections on the current from the lights of Memphis on the far shore, smell and sound was all they would get of the river with the moon and stars obscured by heavy clouds.

  Wrung out from the long day’s ride, Richard declared they would forego a campfire, just stake out the mules to graze and bed themselves down. They slept without dreams until lightning ripped seams in the overcast, releasing thunderclaps and a downpour.

  The mules fought their tethers but the picket pins held and Melvin and Abel dragged the animals into the trees while Richard gathered blankets and saddles and their scant camp equipment. The cover was sufficient to ward off the falling rain, but soon the deluge worked its way through the canopy, leaving no shelter from the fast and steady drip and dribble of the storm. The rain quit before long, but water continued leaking out of the trees so the woods were abandoned for a return to the openness of the riverbank. Huddled under drenched blankets, the brothers slept no more that night.

  Come morning, the sky was clear and the sun rose bright and warm over the Chickasaw Bluffs across the Mississippi. But the darkness of the night lingered in Richard’s mood.

  “Almost home, boys. But that’s a mighty wide river and we ain’t got no way to cross it. Might as well still be in the middle of No-Damn-Where Arkansas for all the good all the ridin’s done us.”

  Melvin wrinkled his brow and squinted one eye and after a moment, said, “Well, what about the ferry?”

  Richard’s soggy hat slapped down on Melvin’s head, then again. “What about the ferry, you fool? We ain’t got no way to pay!”

  The middle brother cringed, and Abel stepped in front of him, preventing further abuse.

  “Stop it, Rich. Your beating on Mel won’t help.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. This ferry and these other riverboats burn a lot of wood. I say we wander on over to the landing and offer to put up enough cordwood to pay our crossing over and back.”

  By day’s end the brothers had chopped and split enough wood to get them across the river with enough left over for return fare when the time came and a little spending money besides. But it would be morning before the ferry ran again.

  Taking their ease around a driftwood campfire, full of biscuits and gravy and fried meat and hot coffee gorged at a Hopefield town eatery, the men contemplated the morning. A round of coin flips chose Melvin to meet Uncle Ben in Shelby County to collect the Pate family Bible and Ezekiel’s journal.

  Rich and Abel soon slept, but there was no rest for Melvin. Hunched next to the fire, he poked and prodded the glowing coals with a stick of wood as if the answers resided there. How would Uncle Ben react to his arrival? Would he be welcome? What should he say? Would his uncle give up the books? If he didn’t, then what?

  With the Tennessee shore silhouetted in the growing dawn, Mel toed his brothers awake. They cleared camp, tethered the mules at the ferry landing and hoofed it into Hopefield for breakfast. The whistle blast of the approaching boat signaled their departure from the eatery and the sated men made the landing in plenty of time to load the mules and find a place on deck. The low-hanging sun’s long reflection on the river pointed the way to Memphis. As the sidewheel churned and the boat bobbed, Melvin leaned over the rail and left his breakfast swirling away in the steamboat’s wake to join the shifting currents of the Mississippi River.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Benjamin Pate stood on the balcony outside his third-floor bedroom, the shadow of his house stretching before him down the street. He held title to much of what he surveyed in the small town a few miles outside of Memphis. Besides business interests in the town, his holdings included swaths of farmland, most rented out on shares.

  A few months ago, he added his brother Lee’s abandoned farm to his properties. Pate sipped his coffee and thought it only right. It was, after all, the family farmstead where they were raised. And even though the home place came to Lee as the eldest son when their father died, Ben never stopped believing himself more suited to ensuring its continuing prosperity than his brother.

  Time, to his way of thinking, had proved him right. While not born a fool, Lee had grown to become one, he believed. His brother’s opinions, always outside the realm of rational thought, had become more entrenched through the years. His flighty notions became more frequent and intense as well until they drove him to forsake all he owned and flee.

  Others, Ben knew, shared his brother’s addled ideas about slavery and sin. But none, to his knowledge, carried them to such extremes—or allowed them to ruin their lives or those of their families.

  Now, owing to Lee’s eccentricities, acres of fertile land were being farmed by sharecroppers, a fine herd of cattle had been driven to market, hogs slaughtered and sows sold, and a comfortable house stood empty—since, that is, Ben had stripped it of furnishings and sold them off. And, his brother and his family were off somewhere wandering in the wilderness bound for some make-believe promised land that even Lee didn’t know where to find.

  A sorry situation, Ben thought as he swallowed the last of his coffee. On the other hand, it did fatten my purse some, so it ain’t all bad. Within the hour, his banker—one of them, that is—solidified his faith in the thickness of his wallet.

  “Mister Pate—Ben—your money could be put to better use than sitting in the vault. I could arrange some investments that would pay off handsomely for you.”

  “No doubt. And line your pockets as well.”

  “I’ve only got your best interests at heart, Ben. You know that. If I can profit a little from making you money, well, there’s no shame in that and I won’t apologize.”

  “Thing is, Frank, I don’t need your help to make money.” Ben reached across the desk, opened the bank president’s humidor and helped himself to a cigar and fetched the hunting knife from its scabbard to cut the end. With its heavy blade of Damascus steel and fancy decorated handle, the knife was overqualified for the job, but Ben liked to show off his expensive tool and wielded it at every opportunity. The banker struck a phosphorus match and leaned over to light the smoke. With the cigar lit and puffed and smoldering to Ben’s satisfaction, he leaned back in his chair and propped a foot on the opposite knee. “As you are no doubt aware, I have done quite well for myself.”

  “No one can deny that. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do better.”

  “I’ll leave that to my bankers in Memphis. The cash I keep here is just that—cash. I want to have that money available just in case. If an opportunity comes along, I don’t want to have to wait.” Ben drew on the cigar and blew a cloud of smoke Frank’s way. “So you just keep that money in the vault—it is safe there, isn’t it, Frank?”

  The banker sat up straight in his chair and tugged the wrinkles out of his vest by the tails. “Most certainly. This bank has never lost a single penny of our depositors’ money.”

  “Good to know, Frank. Good to know.” Ben paused for another puff on his smoke. “My reason for stopping by this morning is to let you know I’ll be withdrawing 500 dollars day after tomorrow. Got a thoroughbred stud horse coming, cash on delivery.”

  The banker swallowed. “Must be some horse.”

  “That he is. Co
ming off Andy Jackson’s plantation up by Nashville.”

  “President Jackson?”

  “The same.” Ben stubbed out the cigar and stood, shaking the folds out of the duster he wore. “I’ve got some good thoroughbred brood mares, and this stud ought to throw some fine colts. I intend to set myself up as a horse breeder in a big way, Frank. And it starts day after tomorrow. Can’t recall when last I was as keen on an idea as I am on this one.”

  Rich men and their playthings,the banker thought when the door closed behind Ben. I suppose it’s good Ben’s got something to look forward to.

  With the dinner hour approaching, the banker decided to call it a morning and make his way home for a meal and short nap. He had not covered a block when approached by a disheveled young man.

  “Pardon me, Sir, I wonder could you help me?”

  The banker took a step backward and made sure his wallet was secure inside his suit coat. He suspected its contents were the reason the man accosted him and had no intention of it leaving his pocket. The man removed his hat and his fingers fiddled with it, rotating it by the brim.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Sir, I’m looking for my uncle. Ben Pate, I mean. I went by his house but he wasn’t there and the man there said he was goin’ to the bank. You are the bank man, ain’t you?”

  It dawned on the banker that the man was one of Lee Pate’s boys. Richard, maybe. No—the middle one, Melvin.

  “You’re Melvin Pate.”

  “Yes, Sir. Only folks call me Mel now. I prefer it since I got my growth.”

  “Yes. Well, Mel, your uncle left me perhaps a quarter of an hour ago. Didn’t say where he was going.”

  Melvin bowed slightly and this time he backed up a step. “I thank you kindly, Sir. Didn’t mean to trouble you.” He plopped his hat back on and turned to leave.

  “Wait!”

  “Sir?”

  “Ben did say he was expecting delivery of a thoroughbred stallion in a day or two. It’s just a guess, but you might find him at his stables out on the old Earl place. You know where that is, don’t you?”