“Yes, ma’am. Ben DeVere was a drunk.”
She coughed, polished off her tea, and held her head high. “He was bound for Franklin, a city on the Mexican border, far away in the state of Texas.”
“Franklin.” Zeb tested the name. “Texas.”
“It might as well be China,” she said, and let out a heavy sigh.
“I’d track Ben DeVere to China, ma’am, if that’s what it takes.”
She gave him the oddest little smile, like she was telling him—Yes, I know you would, young man—but the smile died on her face as she fumbled for the handkerchief again, tears running down her face.
“Beth left with him. Did not even marry him. I warned her that Almighty God would frown upon how she was acting.” She fell silent for a long while, and her lips quivered as she sadly shook her head. “But I did not know our Lord’s vengeance would be so . . .” Here she broke down, and cried again.
The screen door opened, and footsteps told Zeb that the Negro had come inside to check on this lady. Zeb felt the servant’s presence, but didn’t look at him, just kept his eyes on the woman, waiting for her to regain her composure.
“Miz Virginia?” The Negro’s deep voice resonated in the spartan quarters of the old mansion.
She stiffened, recovered, and said, “I shall be fine, Charles.”
“Yes’m.” He left them alone. Mrs. Gentry kept staring into the other parlor till the rear door slammed shut. The lady steeled herself quickly as she returned her gaze to Zeb. “Beth died at some place called Phantom Hill, far west of Fort Worth . . . wherever that place is. Mister DeVere was kind enough to send us a letter, saying he had buried her in the cemetery at that miserable stagecoach station. I guess I should be thankful for that. Knowing, I mean . . . her fate. Otherwise . . .”
Now she bawled without control, but Zeb had what he wanted. He walked out the door, mounted his mare, and rode out of Vicksburg. He needed to catch up with Ebenezer, Luansy, Petey, and Prescott. He didn’t know exactly where Franklin was, but it was in Texas. That’s where Ebenezer was going. Turned out, he was bound for that state, too.
Chapter Sixteen
It did Ebenezer’s heart a world of good to see Zeb come loping back to the wagon. Hearing that Zeb hadn’t caught Ben DeVere, hadn’t killed him, and that he’d be traveling as far as Dallas made Ebenezer feel better, too. Mostly, however, Ebenezer was glad to see Zeb Hogan for selfish reasons.
The wagon was parked off the road, letting other wagons pass, while Petey and Luansy squatted in the weeds, looking hopelessly lost. They were on a hilltop, looking down the bluffs at the Mississippi River. Wagons lined down the road to the ferry and stretched a quarter mile behind the Hall Farms & Plantation wagon.
“Where’s Prescott?” Zeb asked as he swung stiffly off the mare.
“Gone.” Ebenezer shook his head.
“Gone?” Zeb thundered.
“He took off when he heard that Lee had surrendered,” Luansy said as she walked toward the two, carrying Petey in her arms, straining at his weight. The boy was fidgeting, wanted to get down, but Luansy didn’t want him running around as he was prone to do, not with all the horses, mules, oxen, and wheels churning past them. “Took the money you gave him, Zeb. Said we could go to Dallas if we had a mind to, but he was getting back to his woman.”
Petey stopped writhing long enough to say: “He said we could tell that major fellow in Texas that he could go to . . .”
Luansy squeezed her brother tighter.
Zeb choked off a curse.
“We’re better off without him,” Luansy said.
“Yeah, but he knowed where we was going,” Zeb said. Suddenly he whirled back to the mare, unfastened his saddlebag, withdrew the wallet, and tossed it to Ebenezer. “How much money do we have left, Ebenezer?”
The young runaway withdrew a few bills and counted. “Sixty-two dollars and thirty-five cents.” He returned the money, and handed the wallet back to Zeb. “But I’m not sure this money’s good any more, Zeb. It’s Confederate currency. And as much as things cost these days, it sure isn’t enough to get us across that river. Look at how big it is.”
The river was bigger than the St. Croix or anything Zeb had ever seen in Wisconsin. He had seen the Mississippi, but it hadn’t looked this wide, this ominous, back then. A couple of ironclad gunboats sailed down the river, which was muddy and deep, maybe a mile or more across. The sailors on the decks looked like specks of lint, and the two freight wagons on the ferry, leaving the Mississippi side of the shore, looked like toys from where he stood. Zeb couldn’t recall ever seeing so much water.
“I don’t think we could find a log and float across this one, Zeb,” Ebenezer said, trying to be funny.
Zeb didn’t laugh. After staring at the river for better than a minute, he suddenly smiled, tied his mare up short behind the wagon, then hurriedly climbed into the driver’s box. “I bet there’s something we can trade for passage in the back of this wagon.”
“We can’t do that, Zeb,” Ebenezer protested. “It’s not ours.”
“Spoils of war,” Zeb said. “You want to argue, or you want to find your family?”
* * * * *
All that day, all that night, all the next morning and afternoon, the ferry moved back and forth across the river. It was late the next afternoon before they finally reached the ferry. By then, they knew they wouldn’t need anything to barter. The ferrymen were letting everybody cross for free. “Fine Christian folks,” someone said as word came from the river that, with the war all but over, the ferry operators were helping people flee the Union Army, run away from their broken dreams.
Once on the ferry, Ebenezer sat down and stuck his feet in the river. Just so he could tell his family that he’d touched the big river. When Petey saw what he was doing, the boy stuck his bare feet in the river, too, and they both laughed. It felt good.
They crossed to DeSoto, Louisiana, and made it through the marshes that stretched at least a mile from the river’s edge. Cotton fields lay in ruins as they traveled west. Gone were the great forests. Here much of the land was cleared, but the bogs they passed stank to high heaven.
The roads were crowded with Negroes and whites, all westbound, most of them helping each other.
Zeb, Ebenezer, and Luansy learned how to float their wagon across the rivers and bayous, strapping big pine logs on the wheels, turning that rickety old wagon into a boat. They would help the wagon in front of them cross, and the folks in the wagon behind them would help them across. Working together, no matter if they were black or white. There wasn’t camaraderie. Far from it. Yet all of the travelers knew they needed to help one another, if for no other reason than to get away from the crumbling South as fast as possible.
By the third day, they found themselves traveling with a middle-aged couple, Uncle Bristineau and his wife, who were bound for Shreveport. Ebenezer and Zeb could barely understand a word the Bristineaus said, but found them to be good, hard-working, friendly white people, though their skin was burned dark. The sausages Mrs. Bristineau made were spicy and delicious.
Yet everywhere Ebenezer looked, he saw heartbreak. He had lost count of how many abandoned wagons they had passed on the road, or how many graves they had seen.
A red-headed woman in a soiled, faded calico dress ran along the bar ditch, screaming her child’s name, asking everyone she passed if they had seen her little girl, Amelia. Most travelers shook their heads, and kept right on riding west, but Ebenezer, who was driving the wagon, tugged on the lines, and pulled the wagon off to the side of the road. Zeb turned his horse around, and loped back.
“What the devil you doing?” he snapped.
“I aim to help this lady find her lost daughter.” Ebenezer set the brake.
“We got no time for such foolishness. Get that wagon back on the road. Hurry, or else we’ll lose our place in line.”
“Sergeant Ben DeVere can wait, Zeb.”
Zeb tensed, but Luansy said, “Please, Zeb.”<
br />
Ebenezer nodded at the woman, who was already running down the road toward the next wagon, her voice cracking with emotion.
“You can go on, Zeb,” Ebenezer said. “You can go to the devil. Or you can help me.”
“Please,” Luansy said again.
“All right.” Zeb turned the mare around, jumped over the ditch, and picked his way through the woods, hunting for the girl, Amelia. Ahead of them, Uncle Bristineau set the brake to his wagon, told his wife he’d be back as soon as he could, and he leaped down, calling out Amelia’s name.
They found her on the banks of Bayou Laforche, sitting in mud and rotten leaves. She was throwing twigs into the river, singing a tune. Her mother ran to her, swooped her into her arms, and she couldn’t stop kissing her cheeks and thanking Zeb for all his help, though it had been Uncle Bristineau who had found her.
“That girl was lucky,” Zeb told Ebenezer as they headed back toward the wagons.
* * * * *
The next morning, they rode past a thick-shouldered white man whipping a slave tied across the rear wheel of a wagon.
“You’ll be free,” the man yelled, “when you’re dead and gone, Joshua! I’m your master. I’ll always be your master.”
People just rode right on by, not stopping to help. There was nothing they could do. Ebenezer rode on, too, not saying a word, but every time the whip slashed that slave’s back, he jerked, angry, ashamed, tormented.
* * * * *
They floated across so much water—the Tensas, Macon, Beouf, Laforche—Luansy joked they would likely have gills before they reached Texas and thick forests returned. A week later, they paid $35 to cross a bridge over the blue Quachita River, and went through the town of Monroe. A new courthouse was being built. Uncle Bristineau explained that the old one had been blown apart by a Federal gunboat a couple of years back. A number of rough-looking men idling outside the courthouse stared at Luansy and Ebenezer as they rode past. Ebenezer wondered if they stared that hard at Uncle Bristineau and his wife when they passed in their wagon.
They traveled six more miles before pulling off the road and making camp that evening. Mrs. Bristineau cooked red beans, rice, and sausage, while Luansy made coffee and cornbread. They went to sleep full and contented.
* * * * *
A savage kick to the ribs woke Ebenezer. He tried to roll out of his blankets, but a boot slammed into his back. For a moment, he thought he was stuck in some nightmare. But then rough hands jerked off the blanket, and a belt lashed across his back and buttocks. Laughter followed.
His hands clawed through the dead leaves and mud as he tried to get away, push himself up, but something cracked against his skull, and his face was planted against the leaves. He tasted blood. A woman screamed. A shotgun roared. Little Petey cried. Ebenezer lunged, rolled, heard a voice drawl, “He’s a fast little coot, ain’t he?”
Crawling for the wagon, for a weapon, for anything, he felt another boot catch him in the stomach, and he cartwheeled in the air, landing on the stack of logs he and Petey had gathered for the fire. He smelled the wood smoke, but saw nothing except a blaze of orange.
Another scream. Zeb’s! These roughnecks were beating Zeb, too.
“Leave them be!” Luansy’s voice.
Nobody listened to her. Something sharp, like a belt buckle, struck Ebenezer’s head. Boots began kicking his legs, his side, his head, and he drifted off into a bottomless pit, thinking that he had been Master Hall’s slave all his life, and that Zeb Hogan had been wrong when he told him he was free now that General Lee had surrendered. I must be Abraham Lincoln’s slave, now, he thought to himself.
Chapter Seventeen
That cracker trash had left behind a shovel. Maybe it had been their idea of a joke.
When Zeb came to, he staggered over to the smoldering ruins of the two wagons. He was sore, cut and bruised all over, but he didn’t think any bones had been busted.
Petey clung to Luansy, both of their faces chalky, as the young girl knelt over Ebenezer. She looked up, brushed one hand across her bruised forehead.
Zeb trembled with rage. “How is he?” he managed to croak.
“I don’t know. He’s alive.”
Zeb looked at Petey, normally cheerful, rambunctious, but now petrified. The boy wouldn’t even look up at Zeb, just stared at Ebenezer, lying on his back, his face a bloody mess, his body battered. He seemed barely alive.
“Where’s Uncle Bristineau?”
Luansy dropped her head, and numbly Zeb turned around, and walked to the edge of camp, where he found the old Cajun slumped over against a sycamore tree, his head smashed so horribly that Zeb could see his brains. On the other side of camp, Zeb found Mrs. Bristineau, her back riddled with buckshot. Zeb couldn’t stop the tears. Sobbing, he found that shovel, and started digging two graves.
He was still digging when a train of wagons stopped. It was midmorning by then, and at least a dozen wagons had passed them, the passengers looking straight ahead down the pike, not daring to glance at Zeb, or the others, not even the smoldering remains of the wagons. Nobody had stopped to help, not that Zeb could blame them. How many folks in trouble had they passed along the road? And they had done the same, except that one time. He tried to recall that little girl’s name they had found on the riverbank, but her name escaped him. Zeb hadn’t wanted to stop to help the mother find her lost child. That had been Ebenezer’s doing, and now Ebenezer was lying on the ground, the tar beaten out of him. Could be he was dying.
He looked at the grave he was digging, then leaned against the shovel, crying without control, when a steady hand gripped his shoulder.
A man’s deep voice said, “That’s all right, son. You go ahead and cry. There’s no shame in that. I’ll take the shovel.”
Zeb wanted to protest, but couldn’t. He felt himself being steered to a rotten stump. He sat down, watched this stranger hand the shovel to a big brown-skinned man with a black walrus mustache, and then walk over to Luansy, Petey, and Ebenezer. With picks and shovels, other men came from their wagons, and Zeb forced himself up, dammed the tears, and walked over to help these strangers bury the Bristineaus.
* * * * *
“Glory to God, he ain’t dead.”
“No. Not yet anyhow. He’s comin’ to.”
The voices sounded like they were in a tunnel. Ebenezer blinked at the two faces, out of focus, and then smelled the smoke from a pipe. Something cool was placed on his forehead, over his nose, and slowly the faces cleared. Luansy grinned, but Ebenezer found no joy in her face. Squatting next to her was a man in a butternut coat, black hat, and a wicked scar that stretched from just underneath one of his brilliant green eyes, through his dark brown beard stubble, flecked with gray, all the way down to the cleft in his chin. The stranger brought a pipe to his mouth.
Someone squeezed Ebenezer’s left hand, and he gently turned to see little Petey, who also managed a grin. Ebenezer tried to return the smile, but he never knew one to hurt so badly.
“What happened?” he finally managed to ask.
“You got bushwhacked,” the man said.
Ebenezer tried to rise to his feet, but didn’t make it far. It felt like somebody had dropped an anvil on his chest and pricked his side with a thousand pear spines. He sank back down with an oomph, and closed his eyes to fight off the pain.
“Easy, boy,” the man said. “You got six busted ribs . . . a broken nose. You took a beatin’ it’d take most fellows a month of Sundays to get over. It’s a testament that you aren’t dead.”
“Where’s . . . Zeb?”
He waited to hear that Zeb was dead, but no word came. When Ebenezer’s eyes opened, the man with the scar jerked a thumb over to his right. “He’s . . .” The man frowned, spit, swallowed.
“He’s helping them bury the Bristineaus,” Luansy said.
The words stunned Ebenezer more than if she had told him that Zeb was dead. Ebenezer couldn’t believe it. Uncle Bristineau was a kindly man, and his wife . . . I
t just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t fair. Ebenezer started shaking, sobbing, trying to wake up from this terrible dream.
“Ebenezer.”
Through the tears, he saw Luansy’s ashen face.
“Zeb’s all right,” she said. “They jumped us last night. Uncle Bristineau was supposed to be on guard duty, but I guess he fell asleep. They beat up Zeb, but not as bad as they done you. Burned both wagons, after stealing what they could ride off with.” She paused, shutting her eyes tightly, shaking her head, trembling, her words now soft. “Stoved in Uncle Bristineau’s head. They shot Missus Bristineau when she tried to run away. No call to kill either of them . . . not that way. It was pure cussedness. Took our guns . . . what little money we had left.”
“What about you?” Ebenezer asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“I’m all right.”
He let out a sigh of relief.
“They didn’t bother me. Other than this.” She raised her left hand, revealing a cut that had been stitched with horsehair. No matter how many stitches, that wound would leave a terrible scar.
“Who did this?” Ebenezer asked.
“Scavengers,” the white man said.
“Southern deserters?” Ebenezer remembered the looks some of those men back in Monroe by the courthouse had given them. He had half a mind to ride back to town and leave it in ashes. Only he couldn’t stand up, let alone ride anywhere.
The man shrugged. “Maybe. Could be Yankee deserters. Blue or gray, they ain’t nothin’ but trash.”
Ebenezer looked at the man again. “Who are you?”
The man puffed on his pipe, removed it, and smiled. “Captain Livingston Taneyhill,” he said.
* * * * *
“The war ended for me at Corinth,” Captain Livingston Taneyhill said. “Oh, what butchery that was.”
Zeb shot out, “My brother was in that one, too.”
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