by Tony Masero
A third of the entire South’s younger men, some two-hundred and fifty-thousand who represented the next generation were lost and never returned to their homes.
In all it was a sorry world of ashes that the occupants of Columbine stumbled through.
The occupying forces of Union cavalry often passed through the town in columns on their way to their camp at Fort Beaumont and sight of their blue uniforms was a constant reminder to the population of the losses they had suffered. They swallowed the intrusion but none liked the invasive presence. What made it worse was that they had finally come to see that Sweet Dean Pye was not the friendly Northern helper they had first thought he would be. He took what he wanted when he wanted it and had set himself up in the Rolfe House and lived there with all the grasping majesty of a feudal lord.
Wayland too and his band of men were enjoying all the luxuries that their overlord allowed them and with the superfluity of women available they were enjoying a debauched life full of strutting arrogance. Their greatest pleasure was to shame and bring even lower an already defeated people.
When Lomas rode in, he kept his Marshal’s badge from sight and maintained a low profile, setting out to find a room at the local tavern. A place nicely named, ‘The Columbine Comfort’. The ground floor was an old-fashioned barroom more reminiscent of earlier times, with a low hanging ceiling that barely cleared the tall Lomas’s head and heavy wooden furniture that would not have been out of place in a Pilgrim Father’s home. The couple that ran the place were in their seventies and looked a tired and worn out pair. The owner greeted Lomas with a show of welcome intimating that at one time he had been a jolly and friendly enough fellow but the trials of war had brought him down and he had little charity left to display.
‘Be staying with us long, sir?’ asked the owner Asa Lewellyn, in a subdued voice.
‘Not sure on that score just yet awhile,’ answered Lomas as he looked around at the antique barroom.
‘I can tell by your accent that you’re from these parts originally,’ said Asa, his natural curiosity roused. ‘Been away at the fighting?’
Lomas nodded but knowing the propensity for barkeepers and their gossip, he said nothing in answer. ‘Been hard times here, I guess,’ he did allow, nodding at the empty bar.
Asa sniffed and wiped at the rough wood bar top distractedly with a rag, ‘It picks up some later on but folks here don’t have much cash left for play nowadays.’
‘Well, you can hand me a shot. I’ve had a fair ride,’ said Lomas, dropping his saddlebags on the floor at his feet.
‘Glad to,’ said Asa with a weak smile as he reached for a glass and bottle.
Asa was a short, grizzled man with white hair and pale stubble on his chin. He was broad shouldered and at one time Lomas reckoned he would have been a body to reckon with, now though his back was bowed and he favored one leg over the other.
‘You earn that in the field?’ Lomas asked conversationally, indicating the hobbling leg.
Asa shook his head, ‘No, sir. I wanted to, believe me I did. I wanted to go do my bit but they turned me down on account of my age and this here bum leg of mine. No way, they said, I couldn’t keep up with the march. So I had to stay here and me and my old girl got to run this place on account of my son going off to fight.’
Lomas took the glass and raised it in toast before downing the glass in one swallow.
‘Another?’ asked Asa.
‘Don’t mind if I do. Will you join me?’
Asa smiled again as he lifted a glass for himself. ‘Obliged to you. Your health, Mister….’
‘Just call me Lomas.’
Asa set down his glass suddenly, its glass bottom a hard rap on the bar. He backed away a step, his eyes going round in surprise. ‘Now I have it,’ he cried. ‘I knowed I knew your face. Why, it’s Lomas Bell, isn’t it? My Good Lord! You’re that youngster Lomas Bell, why you haven’t been around these parts in a coon’s age.’
Inwardly, Lomas’s heart sank; he had hoped to make less of an impression when he arrived.
‘And you are the same Asa Lewellyn who used to lop timber and got a long pine fall on you one day and bust up your leg,’ smiled Lomas as the years slipped away and he too recalled the man before him.
‘Damn it! Yes,’ Asa slapped his thigh. ‘Why I remember you when you wasn’t knee high to a grasshopper, always getting into scrapes, wasn’t you?’ He turned calling to the kitchen, ‘Mother, get in here. Come along now, here’s an old face come back from the war. You remember young Lomas Bell, don’t you?’ he asked as a small crinkled, shrewish looking old lady poked a curious head around the door.
‘I ain’t so young any more,’ observed Lomas.
‘Darned sight younger than us,’ said the old lady. ‘Yes, I do recall,’ she admitted, her face dropping suddenly and her voice cracking harshly. ‘Went to fight with the Yankees, didn’t you? Turned on your own kind.’
Lomas drew himself up, ‘I went where conscience led me.’
‘Lost our boy at Fredericksburg, maybe it was you that killed him,’ spat the old woman spitefully.
‘Steady there now, Mother,’ Asa cut in. ‘The war’s over, it’s all done now.’
‘Tell that to all them widow women and weeping mothers out there,’ she came back at him.
‘I was never at Fredericksburg, ma’am,’ advised Lomas in a calm voice.
‘What you here now for then? Come to gloat, have you? Sneer at us poor Southerners left under the Yankee heel. The whole place is run by that phony pig Sweet Dean Pye and his bunch of Red Legs; maybe you’re one of them. I can’t abide it, Asa. Won’t have this man in my house.’
‘No, ma’am. I ain’t here to rub anybody’s nose in it. I come on account of my sister.’
The old lady frowned and her angry voice lowered a notch. ‘You’re sister?’
Lomas nodded, ‘She was our youngest, we called her Lady.’
‘Lady!’ said Asa. ‘Sure Lady Bell, you remember Mother. Married that fellow Rolfe and kept the name Ladybell.’
The old lady ruminated, her cracked lips working over the spaces where the teeth in her gums were missing. She sucked air and shook her head sorrowfully, ‘Ladybell Rolfe,’ she muttered. ‘She was one fine woman and that’s a fact. I don’t know what’s to become of us when such things happen to women like her.’
‘I got a note,’ said Lomas, fiddling with his glass rim. ‘Didn’t tell me much so I came to find out.’
‘Wasn’t good, young man,’ whispered the woman, looking at him from under lowered brows. ‘They say she just disappeared one night. All the black fellas up at the house was killed off. Where their lady went no one knows but that swine Sweet Dean moved in pretty sharp and took up residence there.’
‘You think they murdered her?’ asked Lomas.
The old lady sniffed suddenly remembering her earlier animosity, ‘Couldn’t say,’ she said abruptly. ‘You going to see this Yankee out or not, husband?’
‘No, I ain’t, woman. I see no reason for it and I ain’t about to turn a paying customer away on account of your petty spite,’ he spoke firmly and the old lady could see he meant what he said.
‘Sold your soul, husband. Taking money from the enemy like this.’
‘Get out of here,’ Asa snapped angrily. ‘You know what the Bible says and best you remember it – Let the dead bury the dead. That’s what it tells us. Our boy’s gone from us and no amount of hate will bring him back.’
‘Well,’ huffed the old lady. ‘I may have one foot in the grave but at least I ain’t lost my spirit yet. Like some I could mention.’
‘Go on, get back to your kitchen.’
He turned to Lomas again once she had left, ‘Sorry about that, Lomas. She took it bad, losing our boy. I’m afraid you might find many of a like mind around here, they don’t cotton to those that served the blue much.’
‘Who is this Sweet Dean Pye?’ Lomas asked.
‘Aw! He’s some fellow they sent down from Washington.
I guess I can tell it to you straight. Seems like you’re an honest man even if you did fight on the wrong side. Supposedly Pye came to help us out in what they call The Reconstruction. Only thing that fellow’s been reconstructing is the shape of his wallet. He has the backing of the local military and runs with a pack of ex-cavalry men led by a Captain Wayland. Tell the truth, Lomas, in my book they’re no more than a gang of thieves and no-accounts. Pye has control of all food supplies coming in and is the law about here, but he shortchanges and steals away what he wants. Any argument and he sends in Wayland and his bunch, and many folks have suffered at their hands.’
‘Don’t sound right at all.’
‘It’s far from right. But I guess we’re the defeated ones. We don’t have no rights left us any more.’
‘You know any more about my sister?’
‘You must have left before she got married, I guess?’
Lomas nodded and stared into the bottom of his glass, ‘Yes, I was always the black sheep, I reckon. I went off early. Travelled a lot and took up law keeping as a peace officer before the war. Kinda lost touch with all my ramblings, never even found out my folks had died until two years after it happened. We wrote some, Ladybell and me but I was never very good at it. Just a how-do and how are you, kind of thing.’
Asa studied him a moment and poured a refill. ‘Well your sister turned out fine. A real pretty girl and she met up and married with Claude Lewis, one of the Rolfe clan who got that fine plantation out on the old Fort Road. Then her husband was lost to her at Gettysburg and she struggled on alone but she did real good. It was hard for her, Lomas, but she managed against all the odds. Cared for her people and the place. Then along comes Pye and poof! Like a wisp of wind suddenly she’s gone.’
‘Didn’t no one make query?’
‘Who would that be, Lomas? There’s no one left here but the old, weak and infirm. Five year of war saw to that.’
‘Sounds like I should go pay this Sweet Dean Pye a visit, see what he has to say.’
Asa tilted his head doubtfully, ‘Watch how you tread there. Those boys are not about stringing a person up or cutting them down by ambush come a dark night. Why don’t you go visit Nigger Town, maybe the blacks there will have some information about your sister’s whereabouts. She took real good care of them, even teaching some to read and write, I believe.’
Lomas nodded thoughtfully and downed his drink, ‘I’ll go do that.’
‘You want to go see your room before you do?’
The place the locals called Nigger Town was at a distance from the town set in a valley bottom in forested land and was composed of rough made shacks made from gash timber, beaten out tin cans and stolen brick. A trickling creek ran through the bottomland and there were a few scrawny goats and pigs running loose. It was where the few remaining slaves had gone and been left to fend as best they could by the indifferent authority of Sweet Dean Pye.
As Lomas rode in amongst the scattered shacks, the somnolent and suspicious eyes of the few residents who lounged listlessly at their doorways and waited to see what the white man wanted watched him. Most were dressed in poor rags and hand-me-downs and appeared crushed by their circumstances.
One man moved, he was packing long leaves of green into panniers on a mangy looking mule and seemed to be showing at least some semblance of energy. He was an old man, his skin as black as coal with crinkly white cotton-tails of hair on his head, diminutive and round faced he was intent on his labors as Lomas came up behind.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ asked Lomas.
‘Yes, sah,’ said the old man, spinning around in surprise. ‘He’p you, sah?’
‘Maybe,’ said Lomas, looking down at the man from the saddle. ‘I’m looking for someone who might tell me about Ladybell Rolfe.’
The old man pouted, ‘Couldn’t tell you that, mister. Don’t know nothing about that. No, sah. Don’t know nothing.’
Lomas noted the obvious fear in his evasiveness and thought he had better come clean if he was to progress. ‘I got me a letter. I reckon it might have been from one of your people, told me my sister was in a bad way.’
‘Yo’ is Miz Ladybell’s brother?’
‘That’s right, I’m Lomas Bell.’
‘Bless my soul! Is that a fact now? I thought Miz Ladybell’s brother was kilt in the war.’
‘No, I guess that was her husband ‘cos I’m here, large as life.’
‘Yo’ is that, sure enough,’ said the old man confidently. ‘I’m right pleased to meet yo’, Master Bell. Name’s Isaac May but I still ain’t sure I can he’p you rightly though.’
Lomas scratched his jaw, ‘Maybe not you but someone else. Might be it was one of the servants up at the Rolfe House. Someone my sister taught to read and write perhaps.’
Isaac shook his head, ‘No, sir. No one like that here. We all just poor folks trying to make our way, is all. Free now, they tells us. Free to starve, I reckon. Lookee here, I used to feed these here green weeds to my animals now I’se got to eat ‘em myself.’
‘So you don’t know nothing about what went on up at the house the night my sister disappeared?’
‘All them black folks that was up there we put in the ground, Master Bell. They was kilt ever last one of them.’
‘I heard that. Look here, Mister May, you hear of anybody who can tell me what befell my sister. Let them know they can find me up at ‘The Columbine Comfort.’ Maybe there’s a silver dollar in it for them.’
‘I’ll tell ‘em if I see ‘em, sah. But don’t rightly think that will happen.’
‘I’m obliged to you anyway, Mister May.’
Tipping his hat, Lomas turned his pony and rode out of the valley and headed for the Old Fort Road and the Rolfe Plantation.
Chapter Four
Slowly he came to consciousness.
He heard the sound of singing.
A light female voice, high and lilting. Very beautiful.
The light was bright and it moved and shifted before his blurred vision. He realized that it was the shadowed movement of softly swaying leaves he saw, the sunlight breaking through the foliage in radiant hazy rays. In the dazzling light the nature of the tree was indeterminate but he could see it had widely spread branches and the leaves were spear-like. He felt warm too and the bright sunlight glowed and surrounded him as if in a dream.
He thought he was in Paradise.
An angel in a white gown approached. She spoke. The singing has stopped and he understood it was the angel who had been singing and that now spoke to him but the words were obscure and their meaning lost. It sounded as if she was talking to him but from a far distant room.
She was a tiny creature, with a sheen to her skin like delicate bone china. Almost doll-like. Blond haired and pretty, she reminded him of someone but he could not quite remember who.
The angel reached out and touched his brow. Her fingers were light and they stroked his forehead in a soothing manner. She had seated herself beside him and he realized he was in a bed. A bed with crisp, clean white sheets and plump pillows. The angel had begun singing again, softly, almost as if in a whisper. The sound was like a mother with her cradled child.
He drifted.
Was it sleep or death that he enjoyed? His mind struggled to come to terms with the images before him.
The angel was gone and it was dark.
Somewhere there was the roar and clash of noise. He did not know if it was thunder and lightning or the warlike bellow of cannon fire he heard. There was a pattering against glass as if heavy rain was falling. He tried to rise but realized he was shaking; his whole body quivering and there was pain. Oh, such awful unrelenting pain. It seemed buried deep in his bones and he groaned in anguish.
It was the first sound he had heard himself make and he was intrigued by it. He experimented, making a loud grunting noise.
There was light. A sudden swinging light and she was there. The angel was with him; he saw her tiny frame outlined by the flashing lightning tha
t speared the night.
She was talking to him, urgently, although he did not know what the sounds signified. She was tugging at him, pulling a blanket around him and urging him to move. But he did not want to do that, her touch this time was not light and comforting it encouraged sheets of pain in him and he struggled to push her away.
Then there were others. Dark shapes, blundering and thumping loudly. They were looming over him. No longer gentle they hoisted him and he screamed in agony. The angel was fluttering around him, cooing and making comforting sounds but he was falling. She was diminishing, until she vanished like a white moth in the darkness when the flame has gone.
He knew no more.
When next he was conscious, it was to the sound of a tidal motion.
A soft susurration that played in his ear and he could smell fresh green grass.
There was light too and deep shadows where he lay. He tried to turn his head but the effort was too much for him and he gave up and listened to the sounds rushing into his ears. Above the lulling motion he heard a higher repeated cry that seem to swoop and circle above him and it came to him that these were gulls he heard.
He was near the sea.
The discovery excited him; it was the first thing that had made sense since awakening to the blooming light shining through the tree.
The sea, that was the repeating tidal surge he heard. Yes, he was near the sea, and the sun-warmed scent of grass, so it was a countryside place he was in. Or was this just another trick of death? To place him without understanding in some sort of Limbo, alone and incapable, so he must find his own way in a strange land.
But even if this was the case, he realized it did not disturb him. He was used to such tribulations. He knew it and was confident in the knowledge. But he had no idea of who or what he was, other than that small particle of knowledge.
A shadow crossed above him. It was a ceiling he could see now and the shadow meant someone had entered the room through a door from which the light came. Daylight. Sunny daylight.